FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Mary Ann Sampson’s craft and tools include paper she hunts down from around the globe, such as Somerset Book Paper made by St. Cuthbert’s Mill in England; needle, thread and stitching techniques used by early Coptic Christians during the 4th Century A.D.; and, in the very center of her work space, a Vandercook SP 20 printing press.

Weighing more than a ton, that venerable printing press, whose company was founded in 1909, has become an integral part of the revival of letterpress printing and book arts during the past decade.

Sampson is part of that renaissance and works her creative book magic in a renovated bank building in Ragland, Ala., about 40 miles northeast of Birmingham.

“It’s important to keep this history and art alive,” Sampson said this week. “I do everything myself and create each book by hand. It takes a long time.”

During the past few years, Sampson collaborated on a book of poems with Sue Walker, Alabama Poet Laureate and University of South Alabama creative writing professor, using her Vandercook press, English paper and ancient stitching techniques. Fifty copies of the book were published last summer at a cost of $350 each.

Sampson and Walker presented Faulkner Suite at a Faulkner literary conference in Missouri last October.

“I work alone and for this reason the process is lengthy,” Sampson wrote in a paper presented at the conference. “I read and reread the text in order to internalize the feeling that I get from the poet’s words. This helps me arrive at ways to express my visual interpretation of the poetry.”

Sampson’s work is on exhibit through April 12 at the Mobile Museum of Art, in “Alabama Bound: Contemporary Fine Press and Artists’ Books.” The exhibit includes 49 works of writers and artists, many of whom have studied or reside in Alabama.

One of the exhibit’s featured artists is Paul Moxon of Mobile, who recently was curator of a retrospective of Fairhope printer Ian Robertson’s work, also included in the “Alabama Bound” show.

“It’s a bygone art but it’s also a skill that can be taught on a basic level to people rather quickly,” said Moxon, who gives workshops around the country on maintaining Vandercook printing presses and has a Web site devoted to the subject. “You have to take the word ‘letterpress’ literally. You’re pressing the raised type letters into the paper with force and pressure.”

Moxon and Sampson were classmates at the University of Alabama’s MFA in the Book Arts Program.

“It happened by accident,” said Moxon of his becoming a national expert on the Vandercook printing press. He was working at the Center for Book Arts in New York City at the time. “It kind of snowballed. I’m the only who does that kind of work now.”

In late April and early May, he will give three workshops in the Northeast on that printing press, celebrating its centennial this year. He is organizing a celebration to honor the event that will feature 100 posters made on the press from printers from around the country, he said.

“It’s very labor intensive,” he said of letterpress printing. “That why it was eclipsed by modern offset printing. But it’s also the reason that people are coming back to it: one person can do it all.”

Moxon, who owns Fameorshame Press, said another feature of letterpress printing is that it can use special papers not suitable in offset printing.

It’s that feel and look of specialty paper, and the result of letterpress printing with its indented letters in the page, that customers are willing to pay extra for.

“The exhibit is an aspect of Alabama creativity at its highest, born out of a sophisticated program for book arts at the University of Alabama,” said Eric Gallichant, public information officer at the Mobile Museum of Art. “The strength of our collection is crafts of varied mediums.”

Sampson said of the books she publishes that it is sometimes hard to part with work taken so long to create and made by hand.

“A gallery owner from Germany came over and spent a couple of days with me choosing the books she wanted,” Sampson said. “But, even, then I hated to part with the ones she chose.”

Visitors to the “Alabama Bound” exhibit at the Mobile Museum of Art can also visit “Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible,” which closes on April 12.

“Books mediate between private reflection and broad communication like no other medium,” a placard at the Alabama Bound exhibit states. “When a book is created to be a work of art, it transcends its written content, but it does not leave those words behind. Rather, it emphasizes and elevates its subject matter. The synergy of its content, methods, design and the artist’s intent recombine into a whole, the experience of which is immediate and yet rewards long contemplation.”

The “Alabama Bound” exhibit opened Oct. 10 and will end April 12 at the Mobile Museum of Art at 4850 Museum Drive at Langan Park in Mobile. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $10 for adults and $6 for students. For more information, call 208-5200.