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Thursday, March 12, 2009

Can you hear my gnashing teeth from there?*







I'm tempted to buy a couple and take them apart. GAH!










*I wish I had enough money to buy out all these people in Australia with wood type...

7 comments:

jac said...

Oh they're LETTER HOLDERS. I could not figure it out. I thought it was just blocks glued together, you know, like for fun. I'm good now. Continue ranting.

PS My word is "wombid". I imagine it's how the Queen discusses marsupials.

Ampersand Duck said...

I wish it were fun. But it's a desperate attempt to offload woodtype piece by piece for more money than a tray would bring. Maybe he's tried to sell trays but no-one is buying. I would buy, but I'm saving my cash at the moment for press-moving expenses.

There's someone in Melbourne who makes wall-plaques out of wood type. They look gorgeous. There are people in Sydney making coffee tables out of wood letters. It's called 'letterpress craft', which is insulting to the craft of letterpress.

It depresses me utterly because these people seem to think of wood type as an expendable novelty. In fact, Australia's letterpress heritage is completely endangered in terms of equipment and knowledge, and when interest swings back around to it, there just won't be anything decent left.

*sigh*

The Duckpond said...

I think Michael Isaacsen at the Melbourne Museum of Printing would have a stroke if he saw this sad happening.

Not only has he a huge collection of presses etc. at his Footscray premises, but he has what looks like acres of just this sort of thing at another place in Newport where he's desperately trying to prevent it all going to the tip!

He's trying to preserve the whole history of printing in Australia before it all disappears into thin air.

a bit gloomy now
cecilia sharpley
www.cecilia-letteringart.com
www.duckpond-design.com.au/theduckpond
www.papermakers.org.au

lucy tartan said...

I see stuff like this at markets sometimes and get vicariously irritated on behalf of you lot. And besides, these are kind of ugly.

Mummy/Crit said...

Not a letterpresser myself, but sad about the "hey, here's something we don't need anymore, lets just bust it" Kind of an 8 year old mentality I think.

Toasty said...

oh...

oh that's just horrible. I don't know what else to call it.

Anonymous said...

About as useful as the wooden plane someone had epoxied a penny to, to be used as...