Crown Point Press

Kathan Brown (born 1935) is an American printmaker, writer, lecturer, and entrepreneur. Brown founded Crown Point Press, a fine art print shop specializing in etching, in 1962 and has owned and directed it since then. Crown Point Press is widely credited with sparking the revival of etching as a viable art medium. Some of the most important artists of our time, including John Cage, Chuck Close, Anish Kapoor, Ed Ruscha, Kiki Smith and Pat Steir, have worked there. Brown was born in New York City and grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. She received a BA from Antioch College in Ohio and an MFA and an Honorary Doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. In addition, she holds an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.

In 1956, Brown left Antioch College in Ohio for one year to attend the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. There, she began to study etching. After graduating from Antioch College in 1958, Brown returned to the Central School for another year to fine-tune her technique. In addition, she participated in The Print Workshop at 28 Charlotte Street, run by Birgit Skiold.

In the summer of 1959, while on a holiday trip to Edinburgh, Brown noticed an old etching press in the backyard of her rooming house. The landlady offered the press to Brown, saying it had been there since World War II. With the etching press in tow, Brown booked passage on a freighter going to San Francisco from Glasgow via the Panama Canal.

In 1962, Brown started Crown Point Press in a storefront space in Richmond, California. The following year she bought a house in Berkeley and ran the printmaking workshop out of her basement. In 1965, Brown began publishing the etching portfolios of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. The Press moved into a vacant hat factory on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland in 1971 and then to Folsom Street in San Francisco in 1986. Unfortunately, the Folsom Street space was lost in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. In 1990, Crown Point moved to 20 Hawthorne Street in San Francisco where it resides today.

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