01
Publish the prices
Pricing mysteries are how small shops lose trust. Every rate is on the site. The email is about your project, not our spreadsheet.
home / about
A studio built around a drum.
Splice Press opened in 2017 in a former grain elevator annex with one broken Risograph and a loan from a landlord who liked our poster. We now run three machines, a zine library of 200+ titles, and a workshop program that keeps the Thursday-night crowd fed on pretzels and overprint.
Why risograph
A risograph is a stencil duplicator that was supposed to die in a 1990s school office and refused. It prints one spot color at a time through a drum of ink and a burned master. No plates, no proofs, no chemical processing. The colors come out fluorescent in a way offset printing gave up on decades ago.
It is also stubborn. The machine misregisters. It feeds paper at its own chosen angle. Every edition carries small variations that read as a signature, not a defect, once you accept them. We accepted them in 2017 and have been negotiating ever since.
We print for musicians, illustrators, small presses, neighborhood organizations, and people who need forty wedding invitations that do not look like wedding invitations. We teach what we know because the shop stays alive when more people can print, not fewer.
The zine library started as our own rejects pile. Writers and artists started trading copies for shelf space. Now it is the part of the studio strangers come for first.
What we believe, operationally
02
Teach what you know
The shop stays alive when more people can print, not fewer. Open studio, workshops, and honest answers to any question.
03
Keep the misregistration
The machine's drift is part of the work. We design for it, not against it, and we have stopped apologizing for it.
04
Print what matters free
The newsletter, the firefly census, emergency cards. Some runs do not have a budget and should happen anyway.
05
Archive everything
Every run gets a ledger number. Sold-out editions stay in the flat file. The archive matters more than the inventory.
06
Leave the shelf better
Every trade improves the library. Every member teaches someone. Every year the studio should be more useful than the year before.
The equipment
Meet the machines
drum 1 · the workhorse
"Rizzo" · MZ790
Twin-drum unit, handles both our A4 drum pair. Bought at auction from a defunct print broker in Attleboro. Has never fully forgiven us.
- Max sheetA3 · 11 × 17"
- Resolution600 × 600 dpi
- Speed60–120 ppm
- Colors loadedpink · blue
- Temperamentsulks in humidity
drum 2 · the veteran
"Grain" · EZ220
Single-drum duplicator, older than the studio. Simple, loud, honest. The machine we teach on because it fails in ways you can see.
- Max sheetA4 · 8.5 × 11"
- Resolution300 × 600 dpi
- Speed40–90 ppm
- Colors loadedrotates weekly
- Temperamentchill, mostly
drum 3 · the monster
"Whale" · 5-drum unit
Five-drum machine from a defunct church newsletter operation in Fall River. Ran 40,000 copies of a fish fry schedule in a previous life. Runs third colors and long one-color jobs.
- Max sheetA3 · 11 × 17"
- Resolution600 × 600 dpi
- Drums loadedfive, when behaving
- Speedup to 128 ppm
- Temperamentteaches us patience
The crew
founder · press op
Marisol Queyque
Came to print by way of a community art space and a decade of babysitting other people's photocopiers. Runs color separations and the ink shelf. Will absolutely tell you your file has problems, then fix them with you.
co-founder · bindery
Dev Okafor
Bookbinder, comic archivist, keeper of the library. Built the zine catalog system on index cards first and a database second, in that order, on purpose. Teaches the binding workshops.
studio tech · education
June Park
Printmaker and former camera-shop repair tech. Keeps all three machines alive with parts from three continents. Runs Riso 101 and answers the phone with a patience the machines never get.
Nine years, briefly
2017 · The annex
We signed for the grain elevator annex on a handshake and a poster. One drum, no heat, a radio that only got one station.
2018 · Grain arrives
The second machine came from an auction in Attleboro. We named it before it was unloaded, which was ambitious.
2019 · The library shelf
Shelf one went up. It held nineteen zines, twelve of them ours. The trade system started by accident.
2020 · The strange year
We printed 2,000 know-your-rights cards in one night and a weekly neighborhood newsletter. The studio earned its keep.
2021 · Members arrive
First fifteen members joined off one poster. The light table went in. Dev built the catalog database, then the shoebox beat it.
2022 · Bindery month
The stitcher, the cutter, and the drying racks all arrived in one glorious and financially terrifying month.
2023 · The teal incident
A full run of posters faded in a window display in six weeks. We retired the ink, framed one poster, kept the lesson.
2024 · Thursday nights
Open studio went permanent. Membership doubled. The firefly census became a tradition we cannot cancel if we wanted to.
2025 · Shelf two hundred
The library passed 200 titles. We reorganized the shelves, argued for four hours, and painted the ends pink and blue.
2026 · The third drum
A five-drum machine arrived from a defunct church newsletter. It is teaching us patience. The run log passed SP-0850.
Fast answers
Questions we get at parties
"Is it hard?"
June: the printing is easy. The prep is the craft. Anyone can run a drum in an afternoon; anyone can ruin a run in the same afternoon.
"Why not just print digitally?"
Marisol: because digital gives you what you asked for, and riso gives you what you meant. You have to be there to understand it, so come by.
"Do you have a favorite zine?"
Dev: asking that at the counter is fine. Asking it at a party gets you a 40-minute answer. The loon zine. It is always the loon zine.
Come see the drums in person
Open studio every Thursday till 9. No appointment needed, bring paper if you want to test it.