March 31, 2004
Local Letterpress
Photos from a Pyramid Atlantic letterpress course I took with my wife Kari this past weekend. Click any of the images for a more detailed look.
Type in a California Job Case and a galley tray.
Drawers of type with two small platten presses.
Language in the palm of my hand (12-point type).
Using a composing stick.
A bit further along.
Standing type (note the blanks for white space).
Locking up (the type is transferred from the composing stick to the bed of the press and wedged in place by the small pieces of wood, called "furniture").
The pressure on the furniture is reinforced by tightening the quoin key.
Ink.
At last we're ready to pull the press!
Another pull.
Where the furniture, quoins, and quoin keys are kept.
Two tiny little platten presses.
The fruit of our labor (excerpt from Ovid's Metamorphoses, as translated by John Dryden--a passage from the Procne and Philomela myth).
Outside Pyramid Atlantic on Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.