Our press gets some friends

One of the great things about the print shop I work for is they've been around since 1916. Back then all printing was done with letterpress. The second greatest thing about the shop is they still have quite a bit of letterpress items and still to this day print with them. Though mostly it's scoring, numbering and some die cutting. So I spent most of the week talking with the owners, well more like begging, pleading and exalting the benefits of freeing up space. (I'm seeing a pattern starting here. . . ) in an attempt to get a small cabinet of type cases and some other goodies I could really use to get our printing adventures under way. What they generously decided was anything they weren't currently using to do their own letterpress work was mine for the taking as well as the cabinet provided if they needed anything from it I'd promptly bring it in. This is awesome! Not only do a get a whole bunch of type faces, but composing sticks, solvent cans, ink, knives, furniture, pretty much everything someone would need to start a studio. I was good. I didn't go off the deep end and take just anything not nailed down. I only took what my little one press shop would need to get going. I rummaged around and managed to gather up about a box full of supplies. Rags, cord, planer, composing sticks, type brush, tympan, ink. The usual stuff.


I was fortunate to find buried behind a large cabinet of type a fairly full case of furniture. No one even knew it was back there and they certainly didn't need it as they have huge imposing stone full of furniture.


This is the cabinet they agreed to let me have. It was in the pressman's way after all. It's just the right height and size to put the press onto and at least a little more solid than the home made table. Plus it's full of type, mostly fancy wedding fonts, and some numbering machines and tools.


See those cut out on the edges of the cases. Those are there so you can easily pull out each case as needed. The down side is it lets tons of dust and offset powder into the cases. These will certainly need to be cleaned out. Some are so bad you can't even see that there's type in the compartments.