Here’s the part about salvaging letterpress equipment:

published by Fran Shea

People (my mom) always (whenever she feigns interest) ask me, “where do you get this stuff?” Type, cabinets, printer’s cuts, ink, chases, quoins, sticks, cutters, furniture, leads, slugs, tympan, rollers… letterpress takes up a lot more space than this tidy little laptop. I wonder if that’s one of the reasons people stopped using it? I doubt it.

Jen and I both agreed that our favorite salvaging-situation involved a compulsive hoarder with a murder/torture-pit (alleged) in his basement. This house had it all; two commercial espresso machines:

nera-new-2-group-rails-small-180x121nera-new-2-group-rails-small-180x121

two Kluge Printing Presses:

kluge-butner

(just in case you’re wondering: TWO Kluge Printing presses are massive and would look like this if not covered in books, dvd’s, televisions, kleenex boxes, grocery bags, magazines and mail):

SONY DSC

a family-style restaurant booth: (this suspiciously barricaded the basement door)

restaurant-booth-300x224

dozens of old computers: (so sentimental)old_computer

 

“stackable” type cabinets: (we took these)

type-cabinets-butner-basement

and this:

galley-butner-basement

and this:

wood-type-butner-basement

Oh, here’s a fun game:

Can you find the treasure in this photographic vignette?:

letterpress-library

How about here?:pixelated-face-450x600don-butner

°°°°

Oh, well. Enough of the sweet, sweet memories. Here’s part of our latest salvage:cabinet-of-wood-type western-wood-type condensed-wood-type

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *