HAVERHILL – If you want to make a big impression, there’s a garage sale coming soon, right around the corner. You might need to have your own garage.
The Museum of Printing on Thornton Avenue is the oldest, largest printing museum of the United States. It will be open to buyers from Aug. 12-13. This weekend, Massachusetts has a tax-free holiday. Buyers can see about two dozen printing presses for letterpress, as well as hundreds of pieces of wooden type and lead type.
Frank Romano, a walking encyclopedia on printing history was one of its founders in 1978. After graduating from high school, Frank Romano began his career in the printing business by working for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company of Brooklyn, New York.
Romano has worked in the industry for decades as a consultant. He founded TypeWorld and wrote over 60 books on the subject. He also taught at the California Polytechnic State University and the Rochester Institute of Technology. He spends most of his time at MOP (the museum he loves), sharing his expertise with visitors and writing the MOP Newsletter.
The museum houses a wide range of impressive letterpress printing machines, Linotypes, antique typewriters, and even not so old computers. It also houses a library of 11,000 volumes – many donated by Romano – on everything dealing with the history and techniques of printing.
The museum also has a workshop, gift shop and meeting room where specialized panels are regularly held. Earlier this month, four experts delved into the evolution of keyboards, Linotype and typewriters under the banner “Shift Happens.”
Among the highlights in the upcoming sale is a large flat-bed Vandercook press, which Romano called “the Mercedes of letterpress presses,” listed for $11,000; several treadle-powered platen presses, which stand about four feet tall and are priced from $1,500 to $3,000; and about a dozen table-top models, for $200 and up, that still are used for making business cards, greeting cards, postcards and small signs. The museum owns a mechanical hoist that can be used to lift larger presses on to a truck or trailer. However, after this, the buyers will have to do it themselves.
Although letterpress printing had its heyday well over a century ago, Romano said it’s seen something of a renaissance in the past two or three decades as people have come to appreciate the creative process. “They are able to print something, to produce it and hold it in their hands and say ‘I did that,” he said.
Despite the old technology and today’s ready access to computer printing, there is still a call by graphic artists and others for letterpress, not to mention a whole museum dedicated to the history of printing. It was here that the first printing presses in America were used. In the 1630s, New England and specifically Cambridge were the first places where printing began. Print shops began to spread from Philadelphia to New York, Chicago and other cities.
Romano said that just about every other day he gets a call from someone asking if the museum is interested in a late relative’s basement print shop or an old press in the barn.
In response to the calls, museum volunteers assess the equipment to determine if it has historical value as a museum display, if it can be refurbished and put back in service, or if it’s only good for parts or scrap. Even scrap matters. The museum is funded by donations, memberships and sales of metal type, wooden type, and type presses.
Romano said the museum has “brought 110 presses back to life” since it opened 45 years ago, selling them to people who use them for printing or display. There’s a workshop in the back where volunteers rebuild and refurbish presses and store parts for repairs. and to keep the love of the letterpress process alive, MOP hosts periodic letterpress printing classes for seven or eight students at a time – classes that always fill up as soon as they are announced, Romano said.
The Museum of Printing garage sale is scheduled for Saturday, August 12 from 10am to 4pm and Sunday, august 13 from 11am to 2pm at 15 Thornton Ave. Haverhill. For more online: museumofprinting.org.