I printed the above notice myself, in moveable type, on a roller proofer in the National Print Museum in the Garrison Chapel of Dublin's Beggars Bush Barracks.
This is a place full of old magic. It starts with a working wooden replica of Gutenberg's original printing press and goes on from there.
And this is a top view, with the moveable type in the chase and the pad fully inked with the hand ink roller resting on it.
To be fair, the only piece of composing I actually did was my own name. The rest of the type had already been assembled in the chase. I inserted the name, the qoins were tightened, I inked the type with the hand ink roller, placed the paper on the type, rolled the pressure roller over and back, and became a wanted man.
The place is an aladdin's cave of print. There are moveable type machines and a linotype machine just like in the newspaper works in the movies. There are even humble Adanas like the one I had myself. And at the other end of the scale, the machine in the far corner which takes an unpronounceable size of paper, so big it can't be got in Ireland. It's an old Imperial measure, bigger than A1, and it prints 16 A5 pages of a book on one side of a single sheet.
The yellow framed thing on the wall is a copy of the 1916 Proclamation which is a printing story in its own right.
Check out what's on and pay them a visit. There are tours and demonstrations and exhibitions and workshops. Fabulous.
Looks good and looks fun.
ReplyDeleteI guess the authorities had to settle for that image because they had failed to find a picture of the elusive wanted man himself - bit like Michael Collins.
More likely it was an old one they had from 1798 for my non-relative Michael Dwyer (& his mountain men) who held out in the Wicklow Hills for some years after the Rebellion.
ReplyDeleteThis is a larger image of the illustration.
A wee bit before they got the hang of that photography thing. Anyway I don't suppose the guys would have come into studio :)