With twenty years in university teaching fine art printmaking and twenty in new art technologies, Bill Ritchie designs a beautiful, functional printing presses apposite to his art, craft and teaching goals. As printmaking is the ancestor of technologies of communication, to add digital communication in his press design came naturally by fitting USB flash memory SME and thereby creating the world's first smart art instrument in his small, beautiful Halfwood printing press.

A world traveled art professor, a teacher of people of all ages, and an artist who took up printmaking the year he left his father's farm, Bill Ritchie is a visionary, an innovator and considered by some to be a little eccentric. He chose to transform his job of teaching printmaking at the University of Washington rather than conform to national standardized tests. Living in a center of high tech industries, he is drawn to blends of archaic technologies and innovations, enjoying challenging people to use nearly forgotten hand printing to widen horizons in technology, education and design for young people.

Emeralda Works provides software and equipment development for fine art printmaking education and production. The Halfwood Press - flagship product of the Perfect Press Divsion - is profiled in the logo, the structure of this unique etching press which is designed for fine art, hand printmaking. The press is described as, "Half wood, half steel, all real" because it is welded steel-constructed, with precision rollers and bearings, hand-wrought stainless steel driving wheel and clad over all with hand-finished hardwoods. Brass and gold-filled appointments give a final aesthetic richness to this printing press. It is a fully functional machine, capable of printing etching and engraving plates, planar plates such as vitreographs and monotypes, relief plates (linoleum, woodcuts, plastics) and stencil methods. Over 100 people participated in the 8-year startup, purchasing and using the presses in their studios in eight different countries. It is frequently said of this press, "It is a work of art in itself."