THE PHOTO ABOVE SHOWS US during the renovation of our 1868 Robert Hoe Washington #5 iron hand press in 2007. After stripping the press and priming it, we took a break for the photo above. It's a handsome classic satin black now with polished brass accents and leather straps on the rounce. We had picked it up in Portland, Maine, we were new to letterpress, and we didn't get any details on its history.

Then about 2 years later, Ray thought it would be interesting to get into hot type metal casting. After some research, it was time for another road trip back to the source in Portland.

We now also possess a 2nd iron hand press, an Albion that originated in Pittsburgh, PA. Spying a chance photo of that press and putting 2 and 2 together, Ray has been able to confirm its provenance back to its original purchase date in 1928 by Porter Garnet at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

This set us to wondering about the Hoe and its history.

The letterpress gods smiled again

OUR RECENT INVOLVEMENT with the Fine Press Book Association and the Manhattan Book Fair caused us to stumble onto some new information about the provenance of our Hoe iron hand press. A perfect stranger, Steve Vile, walked up to our MBF table and casually mentioned he was a printer from Portland, Maine. That rang a loud bell with us.

Portland is the city where we bought two of our most important pieces of equipment (Intertype C4 linecaster and an R.Hoe Washington #5 iron hand press). We mentioned buying the iron hand press and Steve asked who we bought it from.

"Scott Wilson." Scott Wilson is the printer and book seller in Portland, Maine, that we connected with when we purchased the Hoe in 2007. We also bought our Intertype C4 linecaster from him about 2 years later.

Steve replied, "I owned that press before Scott Wilson. I sold it to him."

That lead us to the next question.

"Where did you get it?"

It turns out that Vile had worked at a Portland print shop and bindery named The Anthoensen Press for a number of years, eventually coming to own the Hoe no. 5 that now resides at Lead Graffiti.

So our newest research project is to find out all we can about The Anthoensen Press.