Chandler & Price

My Chandler & Price New Style 10x15 letterpress, designed in 1911, was cast in Cleveland.  Chandler was the heart and soul of a South Seattle print shop until sometime in the 1960s.  When she was surplused, her last operator was so distraught or thoughtless that he left green ink all over her platen and rollers.  That took some elbow grease to clean up!  I don’t know where she passed the decades, but in the 1990s she ended up in the south end garage of Gary Oswald, along with tons of other antique machinery.  It so happens that my brother David restores and races hydroplanes.  Gary invited us over one afternoon to look for old motor parts.  In the midst of everything David spied the printing press.  "What are you going to do with that?" he asked.  From across the garage came the voice of Gary's wife.  "He's going to get rid of it, do you want it?"  Now, working with hydroplanes, David has use of a large truck with a hydraulic winch on the back.  Before you could say “Dream come true!”  he had lifted that cast iron behemoth, strapped it on the truck, and driven north to my Kenmore home.  He slid Chandler into my garage as neat as could be, and then stayed around to help demolish a wall to get the press into my shop.  I rebuilt the shop around the press and went right to work printing!  I completed Rapture of the Deep, my first book using Chandler, in 1998.  During her commercial life, Chandler had been used with an electric motor and a drive belt, but I wanted a treadle for her.  The internet was my salvation.  With that most modern of all tools I found an ancient ironman willing to cast a new treadle for a C&P press … Johnny Hern, of North Idaho.  The circle was complete, and since that day, East Point West Press has never stopped producing.