My New Toy

This is the new toy that is responsible for the type in my latest batches of cards. Found on Ebay, this is a Cub Rotary Press, an incredibly intricate and complex children's toy from the 1940s, which came with (apparently) all its pieces intact (signifying to me that most likely a child never got his or her hands on it!).



I have lately become enamored of letterpresses (check this out, I'm a big fan!) and was searching ebay on the off chance that someone out there had an awesome old press that they just happened to want to give away, possibly even deliver to Vermont. Naturally, that scenario didn't play out, but this little rotary press seemed a good place to start.




As it turns out, children of the '40s must have had incredible patience, or toy manufacturers of the time must have been very optomistic or out-of-touch, because this is just hard! The first job was sorting out the little bitty type and arranging it in its little bitty box.



Painstaking and neck-aching are two terms that come readily to mind. But see how neat when it was done? And the two little picture blocks came along too!



The mini bottle of ink that was part of the original set is firmly closed and no doubt dried up, so I tried caligraphy ink and it seemed possibly a bit too wet. I don't really know about ink consistencies, but I had difficulty coating the type. Using only a single line worked best, so I just made little word tags, but would love to try to write out something longer. Just got to figure out the ink situation. This evening I tried Chinese brush painting ink, but it seemed pretty much the same.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them!