One printer, an artist and an industrial designer all have this in common: precision.

The last textile screen-printing bastion in San Francisco is still a hidden treasure.

Craftswoman Anne Kirk has been hand screen-printing textiles since 1985 and is now the last still doing so in the Bay Area — and among few in the country. “Griswold just closed,” she notes, referring to the legendary Rhode Island print house where giants like Brunschwig & Fils and Clarence House quietly produced custom runs. With other longtime operations shuttered or absorbed, Kirk is a resilient part of a disappearing tradition.

At her San Francisco studio in Pier 80, a warehouse that once housed Zoo-Ink (where she first began her career), Kirk produces her own linen and wool fabric line, started in 2005 and sold through national showrooms. She also prints for interior designers like Charles de Lisle, who want custom fabrics, and for museums seeking exacting reproductions from historical fragments—sometimes requiring eight or more colors per design.

Vintage fabric recreations are a specialty. “Ann Getty once brought me a swatch she’d found, and we replicated it,” Kirk recalls. Every job is different, which is part of the appeal.

The space required for this work is substantial, and costly. “It’s a real estate story,” she says. “I used to have 7,500 square feet—now just 5,000.” Still, she keeps going, passing on her knowledge to a young printmaker, Ryan Harrison. “I’ve survived, basically!” Annekirktextiles.com

Photos by Zahid Sardar and Anne Kirk