A Letterpress Printer Finds Her Calling in North Carolina by Reviving an Old Technique

Sporting a tidy pink sweater and pouring tea from a china pot, Macon York does not look like someone who owns a guillotine.

It's not what you think, she explains. The guillotine isn't for chopping heads. It's for cutting paper in thick stacks. She demonstrates the technique, pulling a handle as high as her head and as thick as her arm on the hefty piece of 1898 machinery.

It's one of several vintage devices in her studio in West Asheville (North Carolina), where she creates stationary, wedding invitations, greeting cards, posters, business cards and other paper goods.