"BAG" Intaglio Press
The intaglio press.
Made by Freddy Re'em for the Botega D'arte Grafica (school) in
Florence, Italy.
It has a bed size of 25 1/2 x 47 inches and was made in 1963 after a
16th century design. Massive upper and lower bed rollers make this
press ideal for engraved line work on copper. Lacking modern day
micrometer adjustment to the upper cylinder the press pretty much
remains set up for 16 gauge metal plates though without to much
difficulty it can be raised for the occasional wood cut. Unseen to the
right is a hot plate and ink slab area for wiping the plates.
Behind the press you can see the galley racks that hold about 350 sets
of matrices used for the Linotype machine. These are the molds for the
letters that are cast into metal type.
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The
brass rosette was designed by Jean Rush, only about six presses were
fitted with these. Note the book board shims which are used to level
and
control impression strength for the upper and lower cylinders - "old
school".
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A 5 1/2 x 8 inch copper plate for intaglio printing,
The Black
Angel and the corresponding print that was produced from
it. |
Linotype matrices assembling to cast a line of type.
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 Slugs cast by the Linotype. Any measure up to 30 pica can
be set and
type sizes from 6pt to 36pt can be cast, used and remelted again into
more composition.
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 The
Model 31 Linotype. Made around 1965 this is one of the last of the
machines to be made before production stopped. The end of hot metal
ushered in a nightmare world of photo type, rub-on type and all sorts
of other evil contrivances until the mid 80s when desktop publishing
finally became up to the task of somewhat proper text output.
Being able to freshly cast type is a tremendous asset. Some of the
cases of type in the press room date back 100 years or more and the
printing surface of some of those types have suffered accordingly. The
Linotype composes slug lines of text assembling the matrices, casting
the slug then distributing the matrices back into the magazine. A big
time saver over hand composition and taking down forms.
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