Happy New Year!

We are starting 2009 with lots of ideas about using our Adana prompted by the arrival of these little beauties from Father Christmas....

Rollers!! No more careful hand inking for us! The Adana needs a bit of TLC - the springs for the rollers are a bit stiff from lack of use but hopefully we shall soon be printing with proper rollers and using the ink disc for the very first time. Hurrah!

We are also looking forward to the eventual arrival of the Model press - it might be a few months yet though, because the rollers need recovering and we have to find a home for it here (we need to do a bit of spring cleaning and chucking out first...)

Here is an advert for the Model in a copy of 'British Printer' from the summer of 1902...

The magazine came with the press, and has some beautiful adverts! The other page just visible in this shot is the 'situations vacant' page with various adverts. My favourite is this one -

'Engraver wanted for Artistic American and View work; must be competent man and able to make his own sketches; exceptional opportunity for first class man.'

What about a competent woman?! Although I'm not sure you could call my engraving competent - perhaps Jon could have applied instead of me...

When we were doing the history of our house (built in 1894), we looked up the 1901 census to discover that the occupants were involved in printing and bookbinding too! Here's an extract from the census - click on the image to see it properly.

Harry Webster (aged 19) was a bookbinder, Lionel (aged 18) was an assistant compositor and Grace (aged 16) was a book sewer. We haven't been able to find out anything more about them, but it's quite nice to think that we have our press and type all set out in what was probably their bedroom.

Quite how six people managed in our tiny house I'm not quite sure - sometimes there barely seems room for the two of us!

Anyway, here's some nice decorative type that came with the Model press in a sweet little wooden box. We haven't used it yet - but we're looking forward to testing it out with those new rollers!