Golding Letterpress Rides Again

On June 23, 2011 Kwik Kopy in Charlottetown is having an open house, and they’ve invited me to come and demonstrate their 1890 Golding letterpress, a press that came from Dillon Printing by way of Island Offset and currently sits in the window at the corner of Queen and Euston Streets in downtown Charlottetown.

The press is in remarkably good shape for something that’s 121 years old: it could use some oil, some tune-ups to the roller-grippers, and maybe a new set of rollers. But it prints, and that’s the whole point.

This afternoon I went over for a sort of beta-test of the press in advance of the open house, taking with me the Kwik Kopy logo I received in the mail last week from The Augustine Company in Iowa (in the running to become my new favourite company). After a few false starts, I managed to print off a not-too-bad copy of the logo:

The press is a thing of beauty, and wonderful to operate: after a year with my Adana Eight Five, it feels like driving a BMW after a year of driving a pedal-cart.

On the day of the open house our hope is to be able to print off take-away items for visitors – something like a coaster or a heavy card – with this logo imprinted.  I’ll even give you a chance to spin the flywheel (as long as you agree not to hold me responsible if you lose control and it takes your arm).

So today ended up being a morning of Drupal tuning and PHP coding followed by lunch, and then a couple of hours of time travel back two centuries. Hard to say which I enjoy more…