A Letterpress Education: The Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum

Museum exterior

A valuable resource for anyone wishing to become reacquainted with the marvels of letterpress printing is the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum, Canada's largest working printing museum, located in the village of Queenston, Ontario (5 km north of Niagara Falls). 

The jewel in its rare collection of letterpress, typecasting, and lithography equipment is a Louis Roy Press dating from the 1760s, Canada's oldest press and one of very few original wooden presses remaining in the world.

The museum occupies the restored Georgian home and print shop of publisher and political activist William Lyon Mackenzie, who lived and worked there from 1820 to 1824.  The building was officially opened in 1938 by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Mackenzie's great-grandson.  The on-site printing museum came later, in 1990, through a joint partnership between the Niagara Parks Commission, that owns and operates the facility, and a seven-person volunteer Printery Committee, that maintains the collection and secures the necessary operating funds.  

Museum interior

PrintAction publisher Sara Young, who has served on the Printery Committee for over 12 years, wrote me in a recent e-mail:  "I do believe that it is very important, perhaps even more so today, to preserve antique presses and the ancillary equipment that pushed our industry forward and allowed the Canadian printing industry to flourish in Canada from the time of the war of 1812."

From May until Labour Day, the Mackenzie Printery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (last tour at 4:30 p.m.)  After Labour Day, it operates only on weekends until it closes for the season in October, either right after Canadian Thanksgiving or Hallowe'en, depending on its volume of visitor traffic.

Besides special exhibitions and a dedicated library, the Printery museum offers all visitors not only a tour of the facilities but also the unique opportunity to try their hand at setting type and operating two of its eight antique presses.  Each visitor also receives a free poster and bookmark.  In all, it's good value for the nominal admission price of $5 (less for children under 12.)

Additionally, for the second year running, in response to growing interest, the Printery offers two half-day, professionally oriented, hands-on letterpress seminars costing $96 each (less for students), six people per class.

The museum is always collecting names of people who are interested in participating in their teaching programs with a view to expanding their offerings.  The contact for this purpose is Harold Meighan:  905-684-7672 / haljan@gmail.com.

For general information about the Printery, contact:  905-262-5676 / printer@mackenzieprintery.org

RESOURCES

For more resources on letterpress printing, please refer to my Pinterest boards entitled History of Printing and Printing Museums and:

https://www.box.com/s/q5mml6cuznicf5kr8jcs
http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/04/staying-in-touch-with-our-roots-beauty.html
http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/06/robert-smails-printing-works.html

More information specifically on the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum is available at:

http://www.mackenzieprintery.org/

http://www.niagaraparksheritage.com/mackenzie-printery/

http://www.niagaragreenbelt.com/listings/72-museums-a-interpretive-centres/278-mackenzie-printery-a-newspaper-museum.html

http://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g155009-d3320068-Reviews-Mackenzie_Printery_Newspaper_Museum-Queenston_Ontario.html

http://www.niagaraattractions.ca/MacKenziePrinters.html

http://www.welcomecyclists.ca/ontario-cycling-map/attractions/niagara-parks-mackenzie-printery

Photos in this blog post were provided courtesy of the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum.

Robert Smail's Printing Works, Innerleithen, Scotland - A complete working Victorian jobbing printery

R. Smail & Sons Printing Works

While researching several upcoming articles on historical topics, I ran across the following rare and impressive resource in Scotland:

Robert Smail and Sons was a family business of jobbing printers that operated for three generations in Innerleithen (population 2,586, an hour’s drive south of Edinburgh in the Scottish Borders).  

After a successful run of 120 years from 1866 to 1986, the business closed.  Then the National Trust for Scotland took over the property and still maintains it today as a functioning letterpress shop that still produces commercial printing jobs, including some of the National Trust’s own printed materials.  At the same time, the shop also functions as a living museum, giving visitors the opportunity to see and try their hand at letterpress printing and typesetting.

Setting type

The Smail family’s legacy comprises not only their shop and equipment but also a massive hoard of historical documents.  These take many fascinating forms, including ledgers, personal correspondence, volumes of the St. Ronan’s Standard and Effective Advertiser.(the weekly newspaper the Smails produced for 23 years starting in 1893), 1/4-inch glass plate negatives, and 52 guard books containing everything the print shop ever printed.  (The law required printers to keep a copy of every job for six months, but the Smails did it for nearly 100 years.)  Other records include passenger tickets showing local patterns of immigration to the United States, Canada and South Africa.

Since 2006 until the present a seven-person team of staff and volunteers has been labouring to catalogue and index this archive of documents and make it available on line.

http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/Robert-Smails-Printing-Works/

http://www.nts.org.uk/smailsarchive/index.php

http://scotland4thesenses.blogspot.ca/2010/06/ink-and-images-robert-smails-legacy.html

http://www.innerleithen.org.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innerleithen

Ever see Steamroller Printing? Shopping for letterpress gear? Try the annual June Printing Arts Fair near Boston

Steamroller Printing returns to the 10th Annual Printing Arts Fair at The Museum of Printing in North Andover (near Boston), Massachusetts.  This year's event will be held on 16 June (Father’s Day) 2013, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

In the featured attraction, a steamroller will print huge 3-foot x 9-foot prints using 27 individual linoleum blocks made by local artists. 

Demonstrations of litho, intaglio, and letterpress printing will also be offered, and rare letterpress accessories and memorabilia (including wood and metal type, gadges, presses, furniture, quoins, gauges, cabinets, galleys, and chases) will be available for sale and at auction at the event. 

The museum’s promotional Weblink reads:

Dad will love the clang of the working printing presses, Mom will marvel at art prints being made and the kids can get ink on their fingers when they set their name in wood type then print it. Everybody will be amazed as hot molten lead is turned into lines of type and kids (of all ages) can print their own Father’s Day card.

More info @:

http://museumofprinting.org/
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2013/06/12/north-andover-museum-makes-printing-indelible/Nmak0WnMKiq7rPGoCf0fUP/story.html

http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/04/staying-in-touch-with-our-roots-beauty.html

http://www.creativebloq.com/print-design/get-started-letterpress-2131998

Staying in touch with our roots: New tributes to letterpress printing

If I need to be reminded of the beauty of letterpress printing, I only have to look up from the screen on which I’m writing to the door frame of my office, on which sits a small wooden chase-and-quoin-type frame enclosing exquisitely designed and cast ornamental metal type.  When printed, it reproduces an original inspirational poem written by Phillip Ambrosi, one of Canada’s Old Masters of letterpress printing, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in 2004.  

The legacy of his all-letterpress operation, Ambrosi Printers (founded 1929) in Regina, Saskatechewan, its products for a prestigious clientele, and the era it represented came to an end soon afterwards, when Mr. Ambrosi decided to close the shop.

"Type is my art; the type is my palette. I've studied it all of my life, and I make it with my own two hands. When I do a job, I compose it," he told me.

"When I'm gone I don't want the local scrap dealer to come and take everything away, so in the next little while I'll dispose of my treasures carefully.”  I am deeply honoured to have been one of his lucky beneficiaries.

You can find the full record of my conversation with Mr. Ambrosi at:  https://www.box.com/s/b2f8pebelik79cqwi5yv

In another tribute to letterpress printing, Neenah Paper, Inc. (Neenah, Wisconsin, and Alpharetta, Georgia) is sponsoring a new Website, conceived, designed, and hosted by Two Paperdolls Letterpress and Design House in Wayne (just outside Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, and featuring Crane 100-percent-cotton fine papers.  Called The Beauty of Letterpress, the site is intended as an online archive of letterpress resources and a gallery of some of the best and most innovative examples of letterpress prints being produced today.  The site is also raising funds to help move and preserve the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.  https://thebeautyofletterpress.com/donate/

The new site welcomes everyone to submit their own work at:  http://thebeautyofletterpress.com/submission/
Letterpress printers can also add themselves to the list of letterpress vendors sorted by location at:  http://thebeautyofletterpress.com/printer/ 

http://thebeautyofletterpress.com/

http://www.neenahpaper.com/

http://www.neenahpaper.com/FinePaper/CRANEPapers

http://twopaperdolls.com/
http://woodtype.org/