Assembling our Arab Crown Folio Press

I was hoping to come up with some witty title for this post, riffing on Avengers Assemble, but... I got nuthin'. So you'll have to make do with the Ronseal approach instead.

Don't want to run the risk of boring the pants off everyone, so this post will be mostly image-based.

To give a brief bit of background... we were lucky enough to acquire this press through a friend of ours at The Waiting Room. It's a rather convoluted story, but the short version is that we were given the press in exchange for a donation to the excellent Emery Walker Trust. I covered the moving of the press in a previous post, here.

The press most certainly has a fascinating history, if only it could talk. We know it lived at Kelmscott House at some point. It may be bit of a stretch to connect it to William Morris himself, though we can dream!

Some shots of the components before we got started:

(Apologies for the deceased arachnid in this one, at least he's out of focus)

I'm afraid I personally can't take much credit for the actual assembly work, I left that to Sam Boy, my Dad, and our mate Alex.

It was very much a 'boys in the workshop' day. They loved it. Here they are exhibiting some excellent teamwork skills:

One of the hardest things to contend with (other than only having an instruction manual from about 150 years ago), is the weight of the thing. Some components need 2 people to even lift them, and once the press starts taking shape, moving the frame of it becomes nigh on impossible without equipment (or putting your back out).

Some more work-in-progress photos:

(Rope is always handy)

Here you can see it really coming together:

Impromptu (grubby) photography studio:

Me pretending I know how to operate the thing::

Photos like this show quite how much work we've still got to do (of the cleaning and painting kind):

But we're still feeling pretty pleased with ourselves:

So long ways to go yet precious (that's a LOTR quote by the way), but progress made nonetheless. I really need to work on my treadle technique though:

Day 2 of the rebuilt... and it works! Well apart from the lack of a chase. Anyone know where we can get an Arab Crown Folio chase? #letterpress

A video posted by Grey Letter Press (@grey_letter_press) on Sep 12, 2015 at 11:34am PDT

A bit of manual labour

After much searching and some lost opportunities, we've been lucky enough to lay our hands on an Arab Crown Folio platen press. Woohoo!

For those whom that conjures no immediate mental image, it should something like this (this pic from letterpresser.co.uk):

Here's an 1890 advert for it, a beauty I think you'll agree:

Here's what ours looks like:

So, bit of work to be done! Well, I tell a lie. The above is what it looked like a few weeks before we went to collect it. Since then, a lovely fellow called Christopher (in who's barn it was being stored), was kind enough to give most of the components a paraffin bath and now they're looking considerably less greasy. Still plenty to be done, but a bucket load of progress made, certainly.

Phase one of our work with the Arab involved moving it from Christopher's barn, north of Colchester, to my parent's garage, south of Colchester. A surprisingly smooth process, involving 5 people, 3 cars (van plans fell through), tarps, blankets, gardening gloves, and a good bit of elbow grease. In good news, neither the press nor any personnel were injured.

Here are some of the components during the move, I cannot WAIT to get this baby up and running.

And here it is, all neatly stacked up and covered with sheets like a spooky ghost, in its temporary home:

Phase 2 will be rather protracted, as it involves clearing the greenhouse and gigantic hedges from our garden, pouring a concrete base, and building a shed studio to house the press. I'm medium-confident of achieving this over the summer. If anyone has a burning desire to come and help out...?

More posts to follow on our progress. Or lack of, as the case may be.

Type and Transport

You know the Tube font? It's cool isn't it? And the branding across London Transport: brilliant, smart, consistent, right? Alright fine, I bet you've never really thought about it. Take a second now though, and I think you'll agree.

It's coming up 100 years since calligrapher Edward Johnston designed that iconic typeface; so much a part of Londoner's lives that it's almost invisible. To celebrate, the London Transport Museum have put on a fabulous tour at the depot in Acton, entitled Johnston Journeys, and I can certainly recommend it. Apologies for the quality of my photos.

The depot itself is a wonder to behold. Apparently the museum at Covent Garden only represents 10% of the archive of stuff held by London Transport, and all the rest is squirrelled away in this vast depot. It's a complete Aladdin's cave of transport history, really quite extraordinary.

The tour itself was excellent fun. Very well curated, cherry-picking artefacts from all over the depot that related to Johnston and his typeface, in its various incarnations over the last century.

The absolute highlight for us (of course!) was the type case filled with wood type. They even had some formes still locked up with various bits of signage, it was a delight to see.

Sadly it was shut away in a glass case, so we couldn't really get anywhere near it... understandable though, even I could imagine getting a bit light-fingered faced with such a treasure.

The only slight downside for us was that the chaps who gave our tour, whist incredibly knowledgeable on trains, tubes, and the history of the Underground, perhaps weren't quite so expertly informed when it came to the history (and terminology) of type and printing.

For us personally, that being our main area of interest, I suppose it would have been nice to have a bit more detail on that side of things. I know I sound like a total Hermione when I say things like that, but of course I mean no disservice to the volunteers there; they're doing a grand job.

Overall, it was a fascinating couple of hours. We could have happily stayed to explore for the rest of the day. So if you've any interest in the history of type, design, branding, transport or indeed, just the history of our fair city... do check it out.

Off with their heads!

S'alright, we're not really decapitating anyone, just bought us a guillotine and I can't think about the word guillotine without that coming to mind. We'll only be trimming board with it, promise.

So here he is, lovely no? Please ignore our hideous kitchen, we can't afford to do it up because we keep buying letterpress gear.

We had no idea that Adana made guillotines as well as presses. I'm so pleased he's as handsome as our little 8x5!

We bought this on ebay a couple of weeks ago, collection only. The seller turned out to be a charming bloke called Glenn, from Inky Beard Press.

He's based in Whitstable, so we managed another trip to the seaside this month in order to collect. It was absolutely pissing it down, but I'm always happy to see the sea, whatever the weather.

We enjoyed an interesting chat with Glenn, he showed us around his little workshop. He has a marvellous collection of type, and this hunking beauty of a press, a Crown Folio Arab. We are very jealous:

Here's some of his lovely work. I love the 'public hanging' poster:

We can't wait to get cracking with the guillotine and are anticipating it will save us a shed load of time. We've been trimming by hand (it seems we do everything by hand!) with a scalpel up to this point, so hopefully this will give us a few days of our lives back.

New Toy!

A little off-topic today, i.e. this is not about letterpress, or any other kind of printing, but I hope it will prove to be of interest nonetheless. I'm excited anyway.

My lovely maternal grandparents, now in their 80s, are looking to downsize in the not too distant future. We're doing rather well off the pre-emptive mass clear-out. Alongside some awesome 1950s-60s kitchenwear, our favourite new toy is this! A cine camera that belonged to my great granddad. Check it out (and excuse my poor photography):

I was lucky enough to know my great granddad when I was very young, and I remember him fondly, though he was suffering the late stages of Alzheimer's at the time. In his younger days he owned a music shop near Liverpool Street, and was featured in the local newspaper in the 1960s, railing against these newfangled 'electric' guitars. What a legend.

As far as I know, he bought this camera in the mid-1930s. It's still in fabulous condition, complete with the original carry case, instruction manual and so forth. We haven't managed to find any film for it yet, but I'm sure there must be some somewhere in my grandparents cavernous loft. We shall see.

What I love most is the f-stop settings (at least, I think that's what they are), being basically defined by the weather... including "For Average Subjects and Scenes in Direct Sunlight", and my personal favourite, "For Use in Tropics. See Manual". Amazing.