Letterpress Machine

By Arwen O’Reilly

We just got this great letterpress from the folks over at the LoBot Gallery in West Oakland. They were trying to clear out some space in their warehouse, and of course we just love cluttering ours up! We’re picking up the press itself tomorrow, but brought the type cabinet back with us and laid out the trays on the table saw, as you can see in the photos. The press came with a mixed bunch of wooden and metal type blocks; beautiful objects themselves, but I can’t wait to start using the press, too! We found a type block that says “famous maker”–how cool is that? The press is a Line-O-Scribe Sign Machine made by the Morgan Sign Machine Co., from Chicago, back in the 50s. There’s are a bunch of pre-made type blocks saying things like “all prices as marked,” so I think it was largely used commercially for printing up fliers and signs for stores. It’s amazing to think that this was once a really useful machine! Link.