9/7/2018 An Uncommon Reconstruction - American Printing History Association

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friday, february 19, 2016 About the Author

An Uncommon Reconstruction

Seth Gottlieb
Seth Gottlieb is a mechanical
engineer with a keen interest in
the history of technology, who
researches and collects
nineteenth-century American
machinists' tools. He
previously worked as a student
employee at the Cary Graphic
Arts Collection at RIT, where he
assisted with maintaining the
Cary’s collection of printing
presses.

More by Seth Gottlieb

An Uncommon Conclusion
Illustrations from Mechanick Exercises of English (left) and Blaeu (right) style presses. The Home Stretch: Building a …
Putting the “Wood” in “Wood…
Th the first in a series of posts that will continue throughout the year. New England Hand Press Crawl
The Louis Roy Press at the Mac…
Vigoda Press Performance & L…
Beginning in late January and continuing through the middle of December, a
group of four students at the Rochester Institute of Technology will be designing Related Posts
and building a wooden common printing press to be installed in the Cary Graphic The Louis Roy Press at the
Arts Collection there. The team consists of myself, Seth Gottlieb, Ferris Nicolais Mackenzie Printery and
and Randall Paulhamus, all Mechanical Engineering majors, and Veronica Newspaper Museum by Seth
Gottlieb. “This is the second in a
Hebbard, an Industrial and Systems Engineering major.
series of posts that will
appear throughout the year.
While replica common presses have been made before, ours is better described as When designing a wooden
being a reconstruction, which will be representative of what might have been common press, there’s only so
made, but is not a direct copy. We will perform an engineering analysis of our much information…”

design to improve it wherever appropriate, but will use historically accurate New England Hand Press
materials wherever possible. Crawl by Seth Gottlieb. “This is
the third in a series of posts that
We aren’t scholars of printing history, but we’re prepared to learn as much as we will appear throughout the year.
The process of researching
can. We’ve already collected a lot of information in the weeks since starting the
wooden common presses for the
project, and have a much better idea of what we’re doing. Wooden presses changed sake…”
slowly in the time between Johannes Gutenberg’s development of his press and the
birth of iron handpresses in the late eighteenth century. In his Mechanick Putting the “Wood” in
“Wooden Common
Exercises, Joseph Moxon described two styles of press, the “old fashion’d” (the Press” by Seth Gottlieb. “This is
English common press) and Blaeu styles. the fourth in a series of posts
that will appear throughout the
The main di erence between these styles exists in the hose of the press, a year. The term “wooden
common press” is fairly self-
component that works in conjunction with the spindle of the press to actuate the explanatory. It is…”
platen without rotating it, analogous to the toggle mechanism in later iron
handpresses. The hose sits around the spindle of the press, and in the case of the An Uncommon
Conclusion by Seth
English common press is a hollow wooden box. On the Blaeu style, the hose is an Gottlieb. “This is the sixth and
open iron frame that is mounted to the spindle with a collar. These styles existed nal post in a series that began
concurrently, with the Blaeu style never supplanting the former. In England and last year. Building a wooden
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9/7/2018 An Uncommon Reconstruction - American Printing History Association
co cu e t y, w t t e aeu sty e eve supp a t g t e o e . g a da d y g
the American Colonies, the English common press remained dominant, and most printing press takes more than
physical means. It…”
surviving examples in North America are of this style.

Our team plans on visiting surviving presses from this period held around the U.S.
and Canada, and hopes to photograph and measure these presses to collect a set of
data from which to create our design (I’ll also be writing here about the trips we
take). Because most presses available to us are built in the style of the English
common press, we will be building one as well. However, our press will not be a
hodge-podge of design elements from presses made spanning a period of many
years. Instead, we will build a press representative of a narrow window of time, say
the 1740s for example. We will determine this window as the project progresses.
Several presses have already been thoroughly studied, such as the purported
Benjamin Franklin Press held in the Smithsonian Institution detailed by
Elizabeth Harris and Clinton Sisson in their 1978 work, The Common Press. Our
studies of other presses will likely not be so thorough.

We’re only just embarking on this journey, and I invite you to join us. Come
December, we will have a full operable press on public display in the Cary
Collection. Additionally, we’ll be publishing the full details of our design, along
with a structural analysis of it, so that anyone could construct a press based upon
ours. Soon we’ll have an Instagram account to share photos, which I’ll be
announcing in a future post. If you would like a more technical view than the
narrative I’m o ering here, check out our project website:
http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P16510/public/Home. Eventually the page will contain all
the documentation relating to our project. Our contact information is available
there, and I welcome anyone to drop me a line at sjg6582@rit.edu. In a future post,
I’ll be writing about an upcoming trip to the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper
Museum in ueenston, Ontario, so stay tuned!

Comments

charlotte gottlieb 20 February, 2016 at 10:40 pm

This sounds like a very ambitious and fascinating project. I look forward to the
completion and the nished product, which I’m sure will be one to be proud of.
Reply

Elspeth Olson 22 February, 2016 at 1:11 pm

What a neat project! We’re outside your time range, but if you’re ever in San
Francisco, you folks may be interested our museum here – the American
Bookbinders Museum.
Reply

Bob Oldham 6 May, 2016 at 10:12 pm

If you have any interest in consulting it, I have compiled a North American Hand
Press Database in which I have recorded almost 1200 hand presses located in North
America, among them all old the wooden presses recorded by Gaskell, and a few
others including modern reproductions and reconstructions. I have photos of
about half of all the presses recorded, and platen and bed measurements of many. I
am glad to share.
Reply

Seth Gottlieb 8 May, 2016 at 4:31 pm

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