Crown Point Press, under the direction of Kathan Brown, is renowned for its use of the oldest, most traditional printmaking processes, etching and woodcut, in radically nontraditional ways. With painters, sculptors, and performance and conceptual artists - many of whom had never before made prints - the Press has produced works as varied as Tom Marioni's tracing of the sun's reflection on a copper plate and figurative images carved on woodblocks by traditional printmaking masters in Japan and China.

During the past thirty-five years, Crown Point Press printed and published important Minimalist and Conceptual graphics as well as the significant prints of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 1991 brought the Archive of this great fine art publisher into its collection.

Over 200 of these prints are illustrated in color in this book, which offers insight into the creative processes of the artists and candidly describes the development of the Press and the ways it helped transform the printmaking landscape of the twentieth century.