Dandy Lion Press is a letterpress design and print studio based in San Francisco's lively Mission District. Working out of a semi-subterranean garage, we create highly detailed stationery featuring naturalistic style renderings of flora and fauna both real and imaginary. All our imagery is hand-drawn & original. It begins as detailed pencil sketches which are then turned into pen and ink drawings or linocuts. These are made into plates and printed on one of our three vintage letterpress machines, the youngest of these date from the late 1960s and the eldest is over a 100, dating from around 1909.

Dandy Lion Press was founded in 2007 by Maia Karolina de Raat. Maia taught letterpress and related arts at the San Francisco Center for the Book for 7 years.

Her work was twice part of the Center's Steamroller Prints Event where in artists are each asked to carve a 3 ft by 3 ft sheet of linoleum which is then inked & run over by a steamroller. Neenah Paper, Inc. picked her "Baby Bunnylope In A Carriage" card to be part of their 2010 nation wide Crane's Lettra Paper promotion. Maia's letterpress work is featured in two books "Adventures in Letterpress" by Brandon Mise, published by Laurence King Publishing, and "DEZAIN NO HIKIDASHI Vol. 10", published by Graphic-sha Publishing Co., Ltd.

Maia originally discovered the craft of letterpress printing while studying for a Fine Art degree at Smith College in Northampton MA. It was an irresistible mix of arcane knowledge, antique machinery and beautiful ephemera.