Furniture Cabinet

Another wonderful, useful gift from Bill and Gertie Campbell (see also Hamilton Type Case) was a “furniture cabinet.” 

In letterpress, “furniture” is the wooden or metal spacing material of various lengths and widths, that is used to pack the type into the chase. Like the wood you see in this example:

The type has to be held firmly in place inside the chase — the metal rectangle that holds it in the press — and the furniture fills up the “whitespace” to aid in this.

Before the Campbell’s Printing furniture cabinet (which came filled with furniture), I had a motley collection of furniture that wasn’t particularly well-organized. The nice thing about the cabinet, with its shelves of different depths, is that it’s easy to keep the furniture in order, and to find exactly what you’re looking for.

In big and serious letterpress shops there are entire sections devoted to furniture; here’s the section at Tipoteca in Italy:

My furniture selection is far more modest, but it’s enough to keep me going for a long, long while.