Tiny Type Museum: own a time capsule of the print age

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/28/tiny-type-museum-own-a-time-c.html

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Those are great. Maybe I can use them for storing recipes.

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Truly beautiful.
But I’m holding out for a real, full-size working press.
Yeah, I’ll be waiting awhile for that one. . .

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Her ya go

https://www.ebay.com/i/143119335663?chn=ps

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They are out there, both newish and refurbished antique; we’re talking cast iron with Victorian curlicues.
http://www.donblack.ca/fast2.aspx?keyword=Press

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Two words: Heidelberger Tiegel.

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When I was in college - I used to work nights etching printing plates at a shop in big vats of acid. They had some sort of mail order biz.

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“Hot metal” is Linotype or Monotype custom-cast-on-demand, multi-character slugs. Individual-letter, pre-cast metal sorts are “cold metal”.

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I want this one:

A replica of the 1439 Johannes Gutenberg moveable type printing press.

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So who’s the intended market? Wealthy… graphic designers? There must be a few?

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10/10 for the Meaning of Liff reference

Fitting exactly and satisfyingly. The cardboard box that slides neatly into an exact space in a garage, or the last book which exactly fills a bookshelf, is said to fit ‘real nice and kentucky’.

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Also, secondhand type drawers make great miniature display/shadow boxes. I have 4, with the original labels.

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Executive toys - I could also see educational use. Lesson plan in a box. Wish it was priced for me. I love this type of stuff.

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My wife already gives me some hassle about maintaining the darkroom. Explaining the sudden need for an 1893 Albion press would be difficult…

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I’ve done a bit of drypoint, which is a safer etching method involving scratching on a substrate like metal or plexiglass with a sharp object. Acid, like in lithography is intriguing, but a bit scary.

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A few years ago, I saw a magnificent printer’s cabinet made out of quarter sawn oak. 5 ft x 5 ft and 5 ft high, with large drawers at the bottom for reams and reams of paper, graduating to tiny drawers on the top. It probably weighed well over 1/2 a ton. They were only asking $1,700 for it , but a friend who saw it said “It would break your house”.

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It was factory work though; nothing artistic about it. At least on my end.

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I know from my travels and my writing there’s an intersection of educator, designer (graphic and UI/UX), typophile, and historian — and some have the resources and personal interest that the price coincides! My big hook on this is that it’s pedagogical in nature: anyone who owns one will likely feel compelled to share it, and some people and institutions will be using it as a teaching tool, which is excellent.

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Good to know! The only designers I have known have been very young - college classmates actually - so they hadn’t time to become successful. Sampling bias.

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