Today I received an email from Kurt Vandercook Osenbaugh, a grandson of Vandercook & Sons President Edward O. Vandercook who shared some interesting family anecdotes. He says his grandfather’s middle name reflects a relation to “the Oatman girls,” two girls who were captured by [Yavapai] Indians in 1851. “One died in captivity, the other escaped, […]
MoreMore TagAuthor: Paul Moxon, Moderator
NA Graphics adds “Press Sales” page
NA Graphics has added a new page on its website to list presses for sale. This is one more resource for acquiring your own press. See also the Links page on the present site for other companies and individuals selling equipment.
MoreMore TagPatent Pages Premier
Terry Chouinard sent me this advertisement he saw in the BBS Specimen Book (No. 25) for a “Vandercook Gordon Press Vibrator.” He asked if Vandercook made any other equipment for production presses? Good question. After all, their presses were marketed as pre-press equipment. But nothing in the catalogs I’ve seen references anything like the Gordon […]
MoreMore TagHand gripper redux
Goudy said: “The old fellows stole all our best ideas.” Proving it again is this No.4 with a custom-made hand activated gripper bar, similar to the idea for a No.3 discussed on this forum Summer ’08 (archive links here and here). The pedal and chain linkage are still intact, but don’t work, I was curious […]
MoreMore TagRocker Weekend
Here are some photos from my December visit to the Museum of Printing History in Houston, where I spoke about the Vandercook centenary and consulted on their recently acquired circa 1909 Vandercook Trip Action Proof Press, commonly known as a “rocker.” It had belonged to a company in Cincinnati whose owner said that his grandfather […]
MoreMore TagPlease excuse the mess
This site is in redesign. The blog and the older static (html) pages have merged. This will make images and data tables load faster and give you the ability to search key words, categories, and meta tags on all pages. The page hierarchy has been reorganized, some have become sub pages while others are now […]
MoreMore TagRSS Feeds Fixed
After having been broken for weeks, the Vanderblog RSS feeds are working again. For those unfamiliar, RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a free, time saving means of being informed of new content on websites and blogs from the home page of your browser or a feed reader. Check it out by […]
MoreMore TagHouston Vandercook Talk
On Saturday, December 12, I will give my Vandercook history talk at the Museum of Printing History in Houston, Texas. I’ve heard great things about this place and am looking forward to setting up their recently acquired Rocker Series press. Let me know if you will attend.
MoreMore TagComment Images Made Easy
It’s now easier to add images to your comments to blog posts: 1) Write your comment. 2) Select “Browse” and navigate to the file on your computer. 3) Select “Submit Comment.”
MoreMore TagPapercraft Vandy
The Fall issue (mid November) of Ampersand, the quarterly journal of the Pacific Center for Book Arts, will feature a papercraft Universal I to celebrate the Vandercook Centenary. Designed by Shirley Edwards and printed at Logos Graphics in San Francisco. More photos at Lars K. Flickr site. This nicely complements Kyle Van Horn’s papercraft SP20.
MoreMore TagOne hundred years today
REVISED. The question keeps coming up: when was the first Vandercook sold? A 1909 sales brochure says the first press was sold in May of 1909. The story of that sale was recounted in a 1940 Editor & Publisher profile of R.O. Vandercook: “Vandercook had not intended to stop at proof presses, but planned to […]
MoreMore TagBundle status
Today is the official deadline to have received participants prints for the centenary bundle. So far I’ve received 61 out of a projected 100. While it fell on a Sunday this year, August 16 was chosen because it is (was) the birthday of R.O. Vandercook. Several participants have told me their prints are in the […]
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