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Introduction - 1962
History
of Excelsior Press - 1962-1967
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Excelsior Press
Today - 1986-1997
How It was
Done
- 1986-1996
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PEOPLE of The Excelsior Press
-
1975-1985
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|Menu| History
of Excelsior Press- 1962 -
1967
continuing from introduction..... Begin
at
Introduction
...
During the previous winter (1962), his father had
brought
home a
gift
from a neighbor, William C. Soper who had
heard that this
neighbor's
son wanted to be a printer. In his youth, the now
retired Mr. Soper had
worked for the American Type Founders Company.
ATF was the
major
manufacturer
of printers high quality, hard-metal lead type. The
gift he sent over
was a couple of peach
baskets
filled with pied type - little lead letters all
jumbled up in a pile.
12 point ATF Goudy Oldstyle and Italic - cast on a 14
point body. Easy
to work with, even for a novice. That
winter, father and son worked together, sorting out
the letters into
the
California Job Cases Mr. Soper had supplied.
§ Now he
was ready
to
start
printing. §
Some special neighbors knew of his interest in printing. One of these neighbors was Mr. Spencer Brodney
an author who could be rightly described as "A Victorian Gentleman",
born in Brisbane, Australia in the 1880's. Mr. Brodney's story - and
that of his wife Edith and his sons Kenneth and Richard, who became a
characters in the story of the Excelsior Press in later years - is a
tale of its own and deserves its own web page.
§ One day, Spencer Brodney wrote a "Letter of Introduction" to his friend Joseph Ishill, proprietor of the private "Oriole Press". Mr. Ishill and his wife, the poet Rose Freeman Ishill, were personal friends of Frederick W. Goudy,
one of America's pre-emient typographers. They had known Mr. Goudy when
they both lived in Garden City, Long Island during the 1920's.
Mr. Ishill welcomed the young
printer, but would not let him actually enter the shop beneath his house
while he was working, so the young printer would stand in the doorway,
watch Mr. Ishill at work and listen to the impromtu lectures that came
from this interesting old man.
Mr. Ishill did not earn a living as a printer; he had a job of some
sort - but nothing related to printing. He loved printing too much, he
explained, and wanted to print what he chose to print, not what some
paying customer wanted. His advice was to avoid "job printing" as
printing for pay was called, and focus on the content and design and
purpose of the things to be printed.
During the 1920's and 30's, he had printed broadsides for anarchists and
union organizers and poetry and short stories - some quite radical -
for authors whose work he respected. The result is a collection of
beautiful small books and pamphlets currently in the collection of the
library at Rutgers University.
Mr. Ishill printed on an old "Favorite" as well as an Improved Pearl #8 -
a 5x8 chase-sized press which is currently in the collection of the
Excelsior Press Museum.
But although the young boy appreciated the advice and understood its
value, he did not follow it, but thought instead that by doing job
printing, he could acquire the type and equipment and build a shop with
which he could someday print what he wanted as Mr. Ishill did.
§ He wanted to be a printer. If printing for pay could make that happen, it was the path to follow...
As time went on, he learned about printing wherever
he could
-
mostly
from old printers he met. §
He spent one summer visiting his grandmother in Florida and managed to
work his way into a part time job - mostly sorting type and spaces
- for a small print shop called Pembroke Press. Pay was a Big Boy
Hamburger and large coke for lunch. He was satisfied; he was printing
and that Big Boy was the first hamburger he had ever had that was served
with lettuce and mayonaise. Quite exotic.
When he left Pembroke Press, the proprietor insisted on sending him
on his way with a letter of recommendation that said, in part that
"(this boy) has an interest in printing to the highest degree".
Strong words, but they stuck in his mind for the rest of his life.
§
When
he
was
fourteen,
he
had
the
opportunity
to
buy
a
"real"
full-sized
printing
press,
a Chandler & Price 8x12 Platen Press. This
press was
not built for a boy hobbiest, as was his Kelsey
Excelsior, this press
was
built for a man to operate, full time and at full
speed - about 30
impressions
per minute. It was built around the turn of the
century, and was
operated
by a foot treadle, as well as an add-on electric
motor. § Along
with
this press came an older (1870's-90's) Gordon
press built
in
New England by Damon & Peets. There were
also about fifty
California
job cases full of old foundry type - including a
complete selection of Theodore
Devinne's "New" Typeface from the 1890's, and a
very
full case of "Typewriter Type" a mono-spaced
font used to simultate
the style of a Typewriter - a modern machine during
that era. § These
presses and type were from a
printing shop owned and
operated
by Tony Rienzo who had used the shop to
support his family
during
the Great Depression of the 30's, then closed the shop
and left it in
storage
for thirty years until he decided it was time to part
with the now
obsolete
equipment. None of the printing businesses of the
'60's had any
interest
in this old letterpress equipment, so he offered to
sell it all for
$400
to the boy who worked in the print shop downtown.
That boy was fourteen year-old Alan Runfeldt, who
wanted
more than
anything
to have his own type cases and printing presses to
begin his own
career.
He was frustrated that, because of his age, he could
not get a "real"
job
in a printing shop, and was forced to do menial
clean-up and manual
labor. § He
wanted to "set
type
and run
a press" but there was no type to be set in the mostly
offset shops in
the area, and the old printers in the nearby city -
those who still
used
lead type - would not trust the work to a young boy.
So, at fourteen, Alan, encouraged and assisted by his
parents,
loaded
up the entire shop from the basement of an old
building in Jersey City,
and unloaded it all into the new basement of their
home in the wooded
Free
Acres section of Berkeley Heights. The Excelsior Press
began to grow.
It
was no longer a young boy with a boy's toy printing
press, but a real
print
shop with real printing presses -
somewhat
old-fashioned,
but at last, he could set his own type and print on
his own printing
presses.
He couldn't get a job doing what he wanted to do, so
he equipped his own
print shop and went to work.
Three years later, he met Mr. Wallach, who
had
equipped a
basement
print shop for his son, Ken - a classmate of Alan's.
Ken showed no
interest
in the printing press and type, so it was offered for
sale to Alan. The
equipement consisted of a 10x15 Chandler &
Price Platen Press
and 48 cases of foundry type, including a complete
series of Goudy
OldStyle
and Italic, from 6 to 48 point. The cases were
clean and enclosed
in
tight-fitting dust-free Hamilton Cabinets
which shone when
polished
and oiled. The metal was fresh, hard ATF foundry metal
- not merely
lead, but a unique alloy of lead, tin and
antimony - all mixed to exactly the right percentage
to make a type
that felt
right in the typesetter's fingers.
to be continued.....
©1996-2007 Excelsior Press
§ TOP § Contact
webmaster
TOP The
Excelsior Press Today-
1986-1996
Today
(1996)
the Excelsior
Press is resting in a barn on a farm a few miles
outside of Frenchtown,
New Jersey. Only a few miles from the Delaware River,
the farm is a
tranquil
place for a collection of old printing presses and
printers types. The
shop "is a mess" and everything needs to be cleaned
and arranged. Some
presses have collected some rust, the paint is pealing
off of the
Vandercook
Proof Press, and the typecases all need to be cleaned
and the wood
oiled.
But this is being done, slowly, but surely. The shop
will be fully
functional
and available to illustrate - hands-on - just how a
small print shop
operated
during the period from 1900 to 1950. The 10x15 C&P
and the
Heidelberg
Windmill are fully operational and are being used
again.
In 1995, the Heidelberg was used to produce some
beautifully embossed
cards
for The Knoll Group, and the Windmill continues to
crank out carton
upon carton of numbered and perforated receipt forms
every autumn, as
it has since 1976..
UPDATES
update 12/27/2001:
After four months away from home this summer, it
finally dawned on me
that I was 52 years old and had been dreaming about
resurrecting the
old Excelsior Press as a working shop for over 15
years... The result
was a resolve to walk away from this damned computer
and the internet
for a few hours each day, and head into the barn to
putter and print.
Well, I'm happy to say that I've been doing just
that. The
result
can be seen in the photo links listed at the top of
this page.
The Vandercook Proof Press has been disassembled,
cleaned,
lubricated, given a new set of soft rollers and is
once again in
operation. It sure feels good.
* n.b. As of this writing, we are just completing the
2001/2002
"Dog License Season". We've been doing this one job
since 1976...
twenty-five years. For twenty-five years, my
Thanksgiving, Birthday and
Christmas has been overshadowed by the pressing need
to get late orders
processed and printed above all else. No wonder I'm
such a Scrooge. For
weeks before Christmas, my primary concern is to
"print the dog
licenses" and Christmas always arrives as a surprise
to me...
But, now the Heidelberg is placed in a shop in barn
on a
farm -
with heat and insulation- and a fantastic view of hay
fields, the
Delaware Valley, and The Hills of Pennsylvania off in
the distance.
Sunsets are amazing here, too. So these days, as I run
my Windmill and
print these boring, mundane black on white municipal
forms, I gaze off
into the distance at blue skies and amazing sunsets.
It's fun to be a printer... and to be printing.
And now, once again, I'm beginning to print things
much more
interesting than dog licenses!
- Alan - 12/27/2001
update 3/3/2006:
Apologies for the lack of updates in the past five
years... Life goes
on and is very busy. But here I am again, back at the
keyboard,
cleaning up old errors and improving (hopefully) the
look of the
website. Over the years since 2001, a lot has changed
- improved - at
the Excelsior Press. It's really back in operation and
things are being
printed now and then. There's still a lot
of cleaning and organizing to be done, and much of the
equipment is
still dirty and grimy and in need of cleaning, but a
lot of it is
working as well. At least I can go in there now and
set type and print
cards and tickets and posters and such when I can find
the time. But
it's a spring-summer-fall print shop. There is no heat
or insulation,
so most actual printing is curtailed during the New
Jersey winter -
when it's generally below 45 degrees.
But I have been able to print on the C&P using a
new
propane heater to warm up the ink table and the old
printer's trick of
"the ink candle" - a thick candle behind the ink
table, keeping it warm
in a cold print shop... I learned that from Mr.
Liberty in 1965. He
learned it in Romania in the 1890's....
The exciting news from 2004 was Wayne Miller's video
of me
at work cutting card stock and printing some tickets
and posters for
the local Film Festival. There's a link at the top of
this page.
The big news for 2006 is the addition of a few more
hand
presses and hot metal keyboard composition added to
our mostly
foundry-type composing room. Barry Mueller has sold
his building and is
bringing his Intertype and his Linotype - and dozens
of fonts - down to
the Excelsior Press for semi-retirement. Barry's been
running these
machines for 20-30 years and he's coming too - to
teach me operation
and maintenance of these linecasters (something I've
waited 40 years to
learn) and to do composition work for our projects.
We also picked up some type cabinets and some type
from
Hobson Printing, in Easton, Pa. Hobson Printing was
founded in 1896 and
did
mostly letterpress printing - books and such - almost
until the end of
the last century. But the building was sold, and had
to be emptied.
Some of their type and cabinets - and a really neat
wrapping paper
dispenser have been added to our collection.
Next chore is to
arrange
for some projects to do...
update - May 2006
This week's news contains two stories -
The first is about a new printer - Amy, a graphic
designer
from Ohio, who wanted her own press and is intrigued
about letterpress
printing. Amy and her husband Jason drove all the way
out from Ohio to
spend a day at the shop, learning to print on her own
5x8 Kelsey
Excelsior Press. The best part of the day was when I
saw that light go
on in her eyes and her sparkling smile of joy when she
got the test
print to look good. Then she learned to set hand type
and printed a
"Happy Mother's Day" card for her mother. By the end
of the all-too
short day together. We got some nice photos, too.
Watch for them on our
photos page soon.
And, during the week before Amy's visit, we cleaned
up the
back room and washed, etched and painted the concrete
floor - to hold
down the all-too present dust - and made room for
Barry's equipment -
the Intertype, the Model 31 Linotype, his Model M
Ludlow and his as-yet
unsold Heidelberg Windmill. They all arrived on
Tuesday - finally,
after about two years' discussion, the job is nearly
done. All that we
are waiting for is the new 220 volt line to get power
to this
equipment. Soon I'll be learning to operate the
Linotype and Intertype
and we'll be casting slugs for our Excelsior/Mercury
Linotype Samples.
And, once everything is operational, we will be
offering Linotype and
Ludlow Casting Services for other printers as well!
(Now, if I can just get my friend Paul to part
with his
Elrod at a good price, we'll be casting leads, slugs
and border
materials as well.)
- Alan 5/13/06
update 5/6/2012:
Can it be? I have not updated this chronicle in six years! What have I
been doing? (Lots of stuff, but not updating this page, obviously.)
Well, the print shop and web site have grown quite a bit during the past
six years. Updates can now be see on the blog pages
which have been chronicling much of what has happened since it was
begun in 2008. The blog pages also now serve as links to new information
being published on the site, so it's worth a visit..
And, more news. (Gee, this is like a personal diary...) Since 2006,
the craft of letterpress - and the skills and equipment needed to pursue
the craft - have again come into vogue. In fact, two years ago, a
nationally-recognized film maker made a documentary about letterpress
printing right here in the shop. Kiss The Paper by Fiona Otway
is currently "on the festival circuit", and we are hoping to see it on
PBS some day. Our equipment has been filmed by Discovery Channel, USA
Networks, Doug Audria, Wayne Miller and many visitors to the shop. It's
been quite a ride and has been lots of fun.
These days, we are restoring presses, tutoring new printers,
supplying starter kits and various used equipment and supplies in small
quantities to folks who need it. We've also begun "consulting" on
letterpress printing as well as doing training and servicing of old
presses on site. It's nice to get out now and then.
And of course, we are still printing - but now it's both job printing
to help pay the bills and (finally) personal printing which is quite
literally just for fun. I make an effort to print something new every
day when I can. If not every day, at least one little project a week -
maybe just a proof, maybe a stack of cards - what ever. But it's putting
ink on paper that's printing...
And it is still fun. Been at this craft off and on for fifty years now, and to me printing is still magical...
One of the printing projects in the shop, by the way, is a catalog of
well over 50 different photoengravings and wood cuts that were used by
The Kelsey Company in their advertising from the 1870's through the
1990's. These cuts are on loan from Gene Mosher, last owner of the
Kelsey Company. We are printing a catalog, then a book using the
original cuts that Kelsey used well over a hundred years ago. Now, that's a project!
- and we will shout it from the rooftops once it's ready to share with the world.
- Alan Runfeldt May, 2012
For further updates, see our blog pages
to be continued.....
©1996-2012 Excelsior Press
§ TOP §
Contact
webmaster
TOP The
People of The Excelsior Press -
1975-1985
THEPEOPLE
of the Excelsior Press are an important part of its
history. They are a
collection of some very unique individuals. There is
something about a
printing shop which, throughout history - from Ben
Franklin's shops in
the 17th century, to the Excelsior Press is the
1970's, which seems to
attracts interesting characters. Those who passed
through the EP over
the
years seemed to be aware that they had participated in
a special moment
in history. They all seem to have had a sense of
"something special"
about
the EP and they all made a personal contribution to
its character,
reputation
and history. The cast of characters involved and where
they are now
would
be the subject of a small book. Perhaps we'll explore
that in the
future,
after the Web Site fulfills its main purpose: § Documenting
and Illustrating the Techniques of Printing
Generally Employed in a
sole-proprietor-sized
printing office of the first half of the Twentieth
Century
to be continued.....
Update December 27, 2001.
A few months ago, we had the sad news that one of our
Excelsior
Press alumni, Mike Ryan, suffered a heart attack and
died at 46. Mike
first came to the Excelsior Press just out of high
school, when his
father strongly suggested that he "get a job and learn
a trade". Well,
Mike learned the trade of letterpress printer at the
Excelsior Press.
Mike set type, designed printing jobs, and operated
the Vandercook
Proof Press. He printed most of the pages of the
engravings catalog of
the Excelsior Press.
After he left the Excelsior Press, Mike went on to
become a
graphic designer and was most recently involved in
designing and
creating websites on the internet - a far cry from
hand-set type, but a
natural progression - and one which has been followed
by many of us who
used to set all their type by hand from the California
job case...
We had hoped that Mike would be able to visit the
Museum
frequently, and continue his cataloging of the boxes
and boxes and
trays and trays of engravings, wood type and various
ornaments in our
collection. Alas, life was too short for that.
Instead, we will
continue his project for him.
In what we feel is fitting tribute to Mike and his
time at
the
Excelsior Press, our Vandercook, the 1946 Model 4
Proof Press currently
being restored, is being christened "The Michael Ryan
Memorial Proof
Press".
It might seem odd to have a press named in someone's
honor,
but
discussion with Mike's friends and other members of
the Excelsior Press
Alumni have convinced us that Mike would have liked
that, and his
mother was deeply touched when told of our plans. So.
We are having a
brass plaque engraved with his name and will mount it
on the press as a
part of the restoration. We'll also be collecting and
scanning some
images of Mike to add to this website in the future.
- ar 12/27/2001
Update October 23, 2007
Last Saturday, we had a visit from
one of the
Excelsior Press Alumni. Russ Letieq wanted to print
some campaign
posters for his wife Sue who is running for town
council in Glendon,
PA. We had a wonderful time playing with the wood type
and the
Vandercook and made some nice posters for Sue. We have
some photos
which we will hopefully post on page of their own some
time soon...
Update May, 2012
During the past
year, we've had two more very special alumni visitors; Mary Ellen Szper
went on to a very successful career as an artist - practicing both
commercial and fine art and making quite a name for herself in
California.
She bought
herself an RV last year and decided to spend a year "or so" on the road -
seeing old friends and "painting her way across the country", so to
speak. And that's what she's doing right now. She stopped by the farm
last summer and parked her RV out by the north field for a few weeks of
painting in a bucolic setting before continuing her adventure and
heading south "towards Mexico", but seems at this time to be having too
much fun in Florida to leave The Sunshine State. It was good to have her
back, even just for a time. She was likewise pleased that The Excelsior
Press survives. But she was not surprised...
Then, back in March, Dave Powell stopped by. There's a blog post
about his visit... He was a young boy, new to printing when he came to
us. Now he's a grown man and has been very successful in life and in the
printing industry. It's guys like Dave that make us proudest of all...
©1996-2007 Excelsior Press
§ TOP § Contact
webmaster
TOP HOW
PRINTING WAS DONE -1900-1950
THIS SECTION was
intended to offer links to
explanations of how printing was done in the small
letterpress
print shop of 1900-1950. These techniques are being
practiced today in
museum exhibitions, as well as by hobby printers and
private presses
throughout
the world.
However, over the years, it simply has not been
done.
Meanwhile, many other printers have done a fine job
dealing with this
subject. I'll add links here to their sites as we find
them.
(Suggestions welcome)
| If you have a particular interest, and
can't find
information here,
(this is a long-term project....)
Please ASK
and I will be happy to answer your questions
and turn
my
writing to your subject if I can. |
The Skills of
Letterpress Printing fall
into
three major
catagories;
- Typesetting and Composition
- Setting Lead Type
- Casting Ludlow
- Inserting "Cuts" (pictures)
- Press work (Printing)
- Lockup
- The Chase
- The Form
- Furniture
- Makeready
- Printing (Running the press)
- Bindery (All post-press work)
- Cutting
- Padding
- Stitching
- Packaging
§§ All
of
the
above
subjects (and more!) must be mastered by the printer
in order to take a
job from beginning to end. In the larger shopes,
these skills became
specialized
and split up among different craftsmen - eventually,
even different
unions. § But,
for the "job"
shop of the early 20th century - and
even
back to Ben Franklin's - or even Gutenberg's times,
A "Printer" was a
complete
master of his trade only if he could follow every
step in the design,
production
and packaging of printed material. §§
to be continued.....
©1996-2012 Excelsior Press
§ TOP § Contact
webmaster
Sarah and Jenet "kicking the treadle" on the old Gordon Jobber - accompanied by Rich (Frontroom Press) on the guitar.
