Hatch Show Print

Before concert posters became something you designed on a screen, places like Hatch Show Print made them letter by letter.

Founded in Nashville in 1879 by brothers Charles and Herbert Hatch, the shop built its reputation producing bold letterpress posters designed to be understood at a glance. Big type. Simple illustrations. Strong colors. Nothing unnecessary.

As Nashville became a center of American music, Hatch became part of its visual language. The shop printed posters for performers ranging from country stars such as Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to blues, jazz, rock, and touring acts passing through town. A Hatch poster didn't just announce who was playing—it became part of how people remembered the show.

What makes Hatch special today is that the process survived.

Inside the shop, drawers are filled with hand-carved images and generations of wood and metal type. Posters are still assembled by hand, inked, and pressed onto paper using techniques immediately recognizable to the printers who worked here decades ago.

The imperfections are part of it: uneven ink, impressions in the paper, and tiny differences that remind you someone actually made the thing. Walk through Nashville, and you'll see plenty of images designed to look vintage. At Hatch Show Print, you can watch the real thing being made.

More than a century later, the presses are still running.