Enough with the world travels, time to explore closer to home. I visited the International Printing Museum down in Carson. The LA area is full of these gems. I’d already visited a book binding company, now to learn about the history of printing.
Like all museums, most of the artifacts are in storage. Since these presses are so heavy, I don’t think they rotate what is on the floor much.
I love how part of machinery is making it beautiful. Today beautiful is austere and plain. So it was great to see presses where not only to they work well, they are gorgeous.
This wonderful piece is the Columbia Hand Press, very very heavy. The decorations are a selling point, the iron eagle is part of the mechanism, opening the platen (the heavy iron plate that does the printing) back to an open position. Serpents, caduceus, were all just decorative elements to sell the press.
Another hand press, each one operates slightly differently. As time went by, the mechanism was refined, the platen could be re-inked, paper grabbed through. Newspaper printing became a thing, since it was now a rolling production, not a one time imprint.
A replica of Gutenbergs’ Press. His original model was made in 1440. Yes, the Chinese were printing long before the Europeans were. But somehow, once an idea gets west, it really takes off. Of course Gutenberg also created moveable type. Which was very different from the Chinese who carved each page out in it’s entirety. This long tail hammer like object is what is moving the screw, lifting and dropping the pattern. Fondly called the devils tail.
Sara showed us how it’s done. The huge screw is from some other old machinery, I forget what. Inside the Devil’s tail is a smaller version of this screw.
Before the press, all writing was done by hand, the best pens around were quills, ink needed to be refilled often.
Early ink pounces, the kind Gutenberg used. Also the kind Benjamin Franklin used when he apprenticed with his brother in the print shop. In order to keep the leather supple, he would need to soak the leather in cow urine. That’s ok, in the textile industry urine was used as a mordant… No wonder he turned to other inventions just to get out of the print shop.
Some of that movable type. An alloy of lead, tin and antimony is used. It melts at 500 degrees, which is a very low temperature. It hardens instantly, so making the type is fast and easy. Any mistakes, just throw the alloy back into the furnace.
We then had the pleasure of trying our hand at different types of pressed. This metal piece is called a slug, it allowed printers to use a linotype machine to create slugs – a whole line of print. The machine my name was made on was salvaged after the LA Times moved to newer digitized printing methods.
Here are a few things I printed. The center piece, celebrating Apollo 9, uses my slug. I used movable type to print my name – not a very good inking job and then I had fun with other printing methods.
There are drawers with both letters and images.
I’m pretty sure this is from the old restaurant the Egg and I that was in the building that now houses the Craft Museum on Wilshire.
All over the place they have examples of reproduction prints that they can do here.
They have all kinds of cabinets for the type. I wish I had opened this, of course it’s probably empty. I think it’s like this because the printer has a large box in front of him with two cases – like these drawers. One tray in front, with the lowercase letters, and the capitol letters above that, as in upper case. So I’m thinking that this cabinet makes it easy to pull out a drawer and voila, they are already angled.
Don’t you love it when a volunteer really looks the part? Almost like a young Samuel Clemens before he became Mark Twain. Back when he was a printing apprentice. Btw, this is the Linotype machine I mentioned, this is where he made the slugs with our names.
Although this museum is all about printing on paper, be it books, flyers, newspapers ect. Someone brought in a wood carve block that is used for printing batik fabrics. I guess if you love printing it will spill into other areas as well.
Leah