As promised, here is some more information on our exciting Facebook announcement from Friday!
We have been in the process of having a new letterpress refinished and shipped to us since early November. It has been slow and frustrating trying to get something that can print the size we want, while staying within our price range. Ever since we purchased our C&P Pilot, the letterpress demand has only increased. That makes prices soar and availability plummet. We thought we had finally found the press we wanted, and settled on a price (which was more expensive than we had hoped). Unfortunately, as it was being refinished, it turned out to have too many problems to be fixed and we were back to waiting for another press to turn up.
Last Wednesday we decided to check briarpress.org (the go-to online letterpress resource) on the off chance that someone was selling a press we’d be interested in. To our surprise, a press with the exact dimensions we were looking for was listed earlier that morning. They were only asking half of the price we had budgeted for a press, and to top it all off, it was located in Los Angeles! We emailed right away to see if the press was available, and sure enough–it was. The next morning we drove to Silver Lake to see the press, and within 20 minutes were driving home with it! It couldn’t have been a more perfect situation for us. The press hadn’t been used in quite some time, so it had a lot of dirt and grime on it. So, Jamie and I got to work cleaning it up.
Here’s an ad for our press from the 1935 ATF Catalog.
We are thrilled to add a Vandercook to our expanding print shop. There are a few tools that we still need before we’re able to print accurately with this press, but we are just thrilled to finally have it in our home. I’m already thinking up ideas for a wheeled cart to build that matches our current work table. And we have so many new things we want to add to our shop now! Pretty sweet, don’t you think?
