some friends of mine invited me to join them for a personal tour of the silver buckle press here in town. i’ve always been a little curious to see how this style of printing press works, so i was happy to join them.
i love the printed samples they’ve got all over the room. the woman there gave us a wonderful quick introduction to how the pieces of type are loaded into trays, then showed us a few different presses. isn’t this one cute? hmmmmm…… wish list?
then, she let us each print one card using some wooden type she’d already set up on one of the presses.
i loved it. i am so into different kinds of printing right now and this was just so much fun! she also gave me a scrap of a kind of material that i can try cutting my own (crude) type from to do a very simple type of printing. because i really need another hobby. sigh.
i loved learning the provenance of the terms “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters, plus actually seeing pieces of type in different size fonts, plus the little teeny spacers that are one-point and two-point spacing? just so cool to see where all of these things that i use every day on my computer began.
it’s just amazing to me how adding ink to paper can increase its value (monetary, sentimental and/or aesthetic) so exponentially.
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