Tramp Printer Report No. 6

Still printing up a storm in Amos Kennedy’s shop in Gordo. Here’s a near-360 degree roughly-stitched-together shot of his printshop.


For supper, Amos made fried okra, beans and catfish with corn bread.


In the prinshop, I riffed on a vowel.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Tramp Printer Report No. 5

I drove through Tennessee and Mississippi on Sunday on my way to Alabama. There was a major cold front moving through so the weather felt like home, but I knew I was somewhere quite different when I started seeing fields of cotton ready to pick.


I stopped to see the printshop that John Freeman (who I met in Iowa) is setting up in the museum at Green Frog, Tennessee, on a plot of land his grandfather once farmed. He has a Linotype Model 8 he is hoping to get running again.


And look! Below a table I spied a Nowlan proof press. This seems to be evolving into a theme.


After a my visit at Green Frog I drove south into the night, through northeastern Mississippi to Gordo, Alabama. Somewhere amongst the hellfire sermons that clutter the southern airwaves (it was a Sunday evening, after all) I finally found a blues program on the radio dial worthy of my location.


Amos Kennedy’s printshop is located in an old hardware store in Gordo.


Among his functioning presses, Amos has a number of Vandercooks (his go-to press is an SP-15), a Hiedelberg windmill and a number of vandercook-like Italian proof presses called a Fag. Combined with his collection of wood and metal type and cuts, he’s got enough gear to make some pretty serious trouble.


Monday morning, Amos and I made some repairs on a big Vandercook 325.


Once the Vandy 325 was good to go, I set up to print on it and Amos went back to some poster work he had underway on his SP-15. As it turned out, I’d received an email about a last minute rush letterpress job from someone in Toronto, lamenting that I was out of the office and would be unable to do the work. No problem, I replied, I’ll print it in Alabama and ship it Tuesday. It actually felt nice to have some real work to do. Of course, I didn’t make it easy on myself.


I designed a four-colour job, which I hand-inked. The design required parts of the form to be printed at 45 degrees to the bed, so I got out Amos’ chop saw and made some jigs. The printed sheets are pretty, but the printer knows the real beauty resides in the well-assembled type form locked in the bed of the press. I think letterpress printing answers a compulsion I have for pattern making.


A sheet (black and orange ink) coming off the press.


Amos Kennedy’s ink concession. One of the strength of Amos’ poster work is he fabulous, brazen sense of colour.


Amos Kennedy and his other studio guest, bookbinder Myra Kalaw of Chicago. Amos wrestled up a meal of grits covered with shrimp, mushrooms and gravy. Yum.


Local wild letterforms, Gordo, Alabama.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Tramp Printer Report No. 4

I had a great week in Denmark, Iowa, at Larry Raid’s Linotype clubhouse. I spent most of the week working on the three Linotype model 31s, mostly with Mark Turpin of St Croix Falls, Wisconsin. One afternoon a bad thunder and lightening storm rolled through and kept knocking out the power. The overhead lights took time to warm up again, so we spent most of the afternoon with dramatic lighting.


These machines have been sitting still since the last ‘Linotype University’ week in 2011, and some longer than that, so they were presenting us with lots of problems. I don’t think I composed a single line of type all week, other than my name and a line from Thoreau on the first day (Larry is big on making your ‘first line of type’ an event, and even though I’ve composed and cast hundreds of lines I obliged). Mostly, Mark and I spent our week moving from machine to machine, fixing, and sometimes causing, problems. This image above, for example, is not something you want to see. In Linotype vernacular it’s what you call a ‘squirt’. It is when something goes wrong and the plunger shoots metal out around the mats and into the machine. It can take a while to get everything all cleaned out and running again. Mark and I made this one. Actually, we got two in a row before we sorted out the problem.


It’s a bad one when you freeze up the mats. That expanding spaceband staring the line was the problem. It was in the composing channel and Mark and I had not noticed until we’d ‘sent the line up’ to the caster.


Mark’s daughter Sarah (his wife Laura referred to her as his “lil’ squirt”). She’s lighter than a pig of type metal and a deft hand with a screwdriver. I kept her plied with Halloween chocolate, so we’re buddies.


Saturday morning, I said goodbye to Iowa and wandered down the Mississippi River to Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood home of Mark Twain. After a good breakfast in a little cafe, I wandered around photographing the few buildings and signs that did not have Mark Twain scrawled all over them, like the local Republican headquarters.


I liked the layering of letters on this Hannibal manhole.


In the southern end of Missouri, near Cape Girardeau, I stumbled onto a rodeo featuring young riders. I watched barrel racing and calf roping for a while. When I asked this young man if I could take his picture, he piped “Yes, Sir!” and struck a pose. There were a lot of pink western shirts and big belt buckles, and texting from the saddle.


It was a noteworthy day for me in another way. I crossed the mouths of two of the Mississippi River’s great tributaries: the Missouri and the Ohio. I’ve been reading about these great rivers and their role in forming the culture and the geography of the continent’s centre all my life – in Twain, Audubon, John McPhee and elsewhere. It felt momentous to finally see this terrain first hand. This photo was taken looking up the Ohio from the bridge at Cairo, Illinois.

I stopped in Kentucky for the night and will stop for the afternoon in western Tennessee before heading through the northeastern tip of Mississippi on my way to Gordo, Alabama. Amos, put the kettle on.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Tramp Printer Report No. 3

Peter Fraterdeus of Slow Print in Dubuque, Iowa, showing off his new door signage.


Peter Fraterdeus of settting up his Miehle V36.


Peter’s shop is located in the old warehouse district in Dubuque, down by the Mississippi River. Note the fabulous lettering painted on the building.


Peter took me up to see Louise Kames who teaches fine arts at Clarke College, Dubuque. She showed us an exhibit of work from the Silver Buckle Press, Madison, and some of her own student projects.


One of the less flat bits of Iowa just south of Dubuque (a bit the glaciers missed?)


A mess o’ Linotypes at Larry Raid’s ‘Linotype University’, Denmark Iowa.


Hey! Look! Another Nowlan proof press, just like the one Tim Inkster has.


Larry Raid (centre) with students Monserrat Iniguez (Fairfeild, IA) and Nick Kinney (Kansas City, MO).

Bill Powers (Tucson, AZ) at a Linotype no. 31. Bill learned to compose on a Linotype in high school but never pursued the trade. All these years late he’s relearning the machine.



Mark Tupin (St. Croix Falls, WI) and Larry Raid looking over the second elevator on a model 31.

There’s no time to write right now, but I’ll post more later in the trip.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER