I spent a good part of today at the Printing Arts Fair at The Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA. It was my first visit to the museum (they’ve an excellent collection of type and presses), and the fair provided a great opportunity to meet other letterpress nerds.

In particular I got to meet Ed from Swamp Press (Northfield, Massachusetts) who’s casting me some 12 pt. Bodoni to fill in some of the gaps in the job case I acquired last year, John from Letterpress Things (Chicopee, Massachusetts), a store I need to make arrangements to visit sometime soon (for what am I if not someone in need of letterpress things) and Robert from Green Mountain Letterpress (No. Thetford, Vermont).

Robert was an especially fortuitous man to meet: he had a pop-up shop set up in the front yard of the museum selling his works, and one of those was a book The Land of Evangeline and The Provinces by the Sea which, among many other things, features an engraving of Queens Square in Charlottetown facing toward our house. Also – and this was the bargain of the day – Robert sold me 17 pounds of line and perf rule for $1. A single dollar! Now all I need to do is figure out how to ship 17 pounds of lead and brass back to Prince Edward Island.

The Printing Arts Fair was well-organized and full of activities: lithography in action, a Linotype machine being operating, an old Heidelberg press running, and many chances for visitors to, well, print.