The press is here!

My press arrived yesterday! Luckily my work is awesome and let me use their shipping account with UPS. I only had to pay $30 to ship my 108lbs press all the way from Florida! I couldn’t wait for Karl to get home to help me get it out of my car and up the stairs. He was super boyfriend and got out the press from the box & crate it was in in no time AND even took pictures for me (because I’m no good with his camera.) It’s been in storage for the past 35 years!

This weekend I’m attacking it with vinegar, lemon juice & a scotch brite sponge to get rid of the rust. It all looks to be surface rust so it should be fairly easy to get off. Enjoy the photos! (excuse the messy apartment background)




This type was already set up in the center, so I have my first few pieces of metal type!

one year at GMPC

Tons of Barbie projects later... today marks my one year anniversary at my job!
I've photographed a lot of the stuff I've done that we've either produced or gotten production samples of and they are going to be put up my website sometime!

Craftsmen Letterpress

Exciting news... I got a letterpress!

I got it off of Briar Press, which is an enthusiast's #1 stop for buying, selling & learning all things letterpress. Every day I would sift through the classifieds section, Karl would even help me out looking on ebay, and finally I took a shot in the dark and responded to this ad:

Craftsmen Table Top Platen Letterpress - My father gave me this Letterpress over 45 Years ago. It’s been in Storage off and on for the last 35 Years. It is similar to the Chandler & Price Pilot Letterpress. I have included a Picture for your review

I'd pretty much written this off because a) it had been posted 5 days before I saw it (similar to seeing something for Free on craigslist and responding 5 days later...) and b) the guy selling it lives in Florida. I wrote a quick note asking if this press was still available and would shipping to Los Angeles be an option. A few days later I got: yes & YES. We spoke on the phone the other day to iron out the details of shipping and payment. He was so nice and told me that if once I get it I needed any help to call him and ask anything I might need to know. He ran a printing business himself and was more than happy to give me some great business advice like P.O.D (pay on delivery!) which I learned all about in my freelance business class :)

I'm so excited about finding one! I have to be honest I was starting to feel like I would NEVER get one. Being a fan of and reading some of the blogs I have in my links section, Adventures in Letterpress, Joie Studio and Cake & Pie it seemed like they all got their first presses almost two years so my lack of responses and the prices I was seeing on ebay were really discouraging. They stopped being produced in the '80s with the invention of desktop publishing taking over. Most of the ones being used though (at Paper Source for example) are anywhere from 30-100 years old!

My press is a Craftsmen 5x8 which means the maximum printing area is little less than 5x8. According to The Introduction to Letterpress article mine is known as a High-end Lever Press/Tabletop Platen. It's the perfect size to be in my apartment! Some of the larger printing models weigh into the tons!

Here are the photos that were in the Ad (in the top one you can even see some type set in the middle waiting to be printed!) I'll take more when I actually get it! YAY!





Happy weekend everyone! Karl and I are seeing The Kids in the Hall perform in downtown tonight!

God bless you, Mr. Torgan

If I'm not checking out movies from Memorial Library then I'm here at The New Beverly theater.
It's about 1.5 miles from our place but I would drive from just about any place to see something here. This revival theater is celebrating its 30th anniversary today! It's a steal at $7/double feature, but Karl and I go here so often we get a pass that makes the movies $4.50/double feature, so cheap! We've seen some really great double bills here, from Metropolis & Dark City (my first time there!) to The Monkee's movies Head & Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The New Beverly is really special to us. This is a little blurb from their calendar this month...

This May 5th will mark the start of the New Beverly Cinema's 30th year in business! To celebrate this occasion, our May 2008 calendar will be a show-for-show replication of our May 1978 debut calendar. The only deviations from May 1978 will be the Grindhouse Film Festival shows, the midnight shows, and a substitute for LOGAN'S RUN on May 4-6 (no studio prints of that title exist at the moment). In keeping with the spirit of the 30th anniversary, all of these shows will be from 1978 or earlier.

RESERVOIR DOGS, one of the New Beverly's most successful midnight shows, and one of the longest running (every Saturday at midnight for most of the early to mid 90s), will also return to the New Beverly Fridays at midnight starting May 9!

The May 2008 is lovingly dedicated to my dad Sherman, who was the main driving force behind the New Beverly from its founding in '78 until his sudden and untimely passing this past July. The New Beverly would have never made it this far without him, and we'll never forget him.

- Michael Torgan


image above: The late Sherman Torgan