A Letterpress Swoop...
/This weekend — Saturday and Sunday, June 3rd and 4th — we’re having a good ole’ fashioned “Letterpress Swoop.” What’s that you may ask? That’s when a large assemblage of letterpress stuff is gathered up in one place. In the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, often times it was right in an actual print shop that was closed, or about to close. Word would spread throughout the letterpress community; on the given date(s) the shop owner opened the doors and, like locusts, letterpressers would come in swarms.
Many of today’s “mature” letterpress craftspeople got their start or greatly enlarged their shops by attending such events. Many, many treasures would be found, prices haggled, handshakes given and a lot of stuff got hauled away. They were indeed social events; letterpressers came from miles around! Truly win/win situations for shop owners and for letterpress practitioners.
Forward to the present day, long time friend and associate — Dave Donahue — has resided on the second floor of the building [Letterpress Things is on the fourth floor]. Dave is presently downsizing and relocating to a different, nearby building. Over several decades an impressive collection of letterpress and bookbinding equipment has been amassed. To lighten the “load,” a month ago much of his bookbinding stuff was auctioned through “High Bids Win.” Now it’s time to dispose of a portion his letterpress stuff.
Ten+ cabinets of type, a variety of table top presses, boxes and pallets of “letterpress things” are being hauled up to the fourth floor. The next few days will be helter-skelter arranging things and laying out small stuff. Sorry, this event developed very quickly so there are no lists of fonts or items to share. Best we can offer is come on by Saturday or Sunday, 9 am to 3 pm. There’ll be lots to browse through and we can all enjoy reminiscing about letterpress as it was 40 years ago!
John B / JoAnn
Ten+ cabinets with type
Large size type in galley trays
Wood Type fonts
table top presses