Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
Printing workplaces
Some of you may remember an article that appeared on Metal Type last year called David Evans, A New Era, 2011. It took a look at David Evans’ move from Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK to new premises in Mytholmroyd, four miles up the road.
David, and new partner Stanley Wilson, have even managed to add to their collection of letterpress equipment since the move. I visited the new premises again in June 2012.
Many thanks to Flickr user Robert Clerebaut for allowing these photographs of his father’s print shop in Brussels, Belgium, to be used on Metal Type
Robert said: “My father started as a typesetter in 1928. He opened his print shop in Brussels in 1937. I studied at the School Amsterdamse Grafische (1956-1960) and worked in the family print shop in Brussels. In addition, I gave over 13 years at the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre (1993-2005). Since 1980 member of the Rencontres Internationales de Lure, and I met Francois Boltana.
David Evans recently got in touch with me. You may remember he was featured on Metal Type way back in 2002.
His business in Halifax ran six Intertypes producing personalised gifts. To cut a long story short, David’s business has now been taken over and has moved to Mytholmroyd, 4 miles up the road.
Many thanks to Dan Williams for sending in this article taken from a 1971 edition of the American publication “Graphical Arts Monthly.” It explores how viable a small letterpress print shop was in the early 1970s.
IS LETTERPRESS dead for the small printer? Edgecombe Printer in Kalamazoo, Mich, is a good example of a shop that is making a profit with letterpress in competition with offset.
Many thanks to Derek Cross for sending in this photograph and story.
The Argus Press was situated off Fleet Street in Tudor Street. It printed a number of magazines and newspapers, including the Observer.
The photographs on this page were taken from the collection held by the United States Library of Congress.
Various other bits of equipment can be seen on the picture – presumably there’s a press in there somewhere – some type-cases to the left of the picture.
Thanks to Dan Williams for sending in these scans of an article from the September 1970 edition of “Graphic Southwest” describing long-established trade-typesetter Jaggers Chiles Stovall’s move to new premises.
According to Dan, John F Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, worked at the company for a while. They produced some typesetting work for the US Government, giving conspiracy theorists a little fuel.
There are six pages of Yorkshire Evening Press photos on Metal Type. Check the “Related Pages” menu to see the rest.
Many thanks to an ex-colleague, Ian Cottom, for sending in a scan of the front cover of “The Newsman” from October 1954.
Many thanks to Tony Bassano for sending in this picture of himself seated at the Intertype that he operated for 23 years.
Says Tony: “Here is a photograph of me circa 1976 setting type on the C4-1 Intertype machine I operated for Califorms Printing Company in San Jose, California for 23 years.
Chris Johnson contacted Metal Type in November 2007 saying that he was an engineer working for Express Gifts, part of Findel PLC and had been looking after 3 working Intertype Monarchs for the past 11 years. The company had recently acquired a refurbished Intertype C4 to bring the count of working linecasters up to 4! The machines are used to produce slugs of people’s names to manufacture personalised gift items.
The machines all have a Decitek Floppy Disk Drive operating a Fairchild Teletypesetting unit. Chris very kindly sent in the following photographs.