26. The Yellow Barn Press-The Barbarian Press

Crispin and Jan Elsted founded the Barbarian Press in Boughton Monchelsea, Kent, in 1977, having been trained in letterpress by Graham Williams at the Florin Press. In 1978, they moved the Press to Canada, establishing it on five wooded acres in Steelhead, British Columbia, near Mission, about 50 miles east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley, where they continue today (2013) to print books using letterpress and wood engraving.

During the nineties, DePol created twenty-one illustrations for Theresa Kishkan’s Inishbream, published in 1999, four years after The Barbarians had established itself as the premier Canadian press for wood engraving with their Endgrain: Contemporary Wood Engraving in North America. That there was sufficient interest in let alone material for a publication on North American wood engraving was a tribute to John DePol. Inishbream won First Prize, Limited Editions, Alcuin Society Citations for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, and it may be DePol’s only Canadian publication.