Not a book, but book-adjacent...
This was my birthday gift from my wife:
It's an antique book press made by Bradley & Hubbard around the turn of the century. It's in great shape, especially the logo, which is really pretty!
I love and collect books, but as a non-collector (with the exception of her lovely Margaret Atwood collection) she finds it difficult to shop for books for me. I get it! She's made some good attempts in the past, but it's difficult to know what exactly I want at any given time without explicitly asking and kind of ruining the surprise.
Fortunately, I also like things that are book-related - cool bookmarks, unique bookends, and book presses. I think the various processes that go into book making are really interesting - the designs and bindings and endpapers and such -
especially when they are being done by real masters of the craft. I love prototypes and extras and all sorts of stuff associated with the whole process (which I why I really appreciate Paul's updates and the windows he allows us to look through to see the journey the books take from idea to actuality).
I only have one book press so far, it's a wooden one that is really neat but that I actually got to help me with some minor book repair work in cases where the services of a book restorer would be more expensive than just getting a different copy of a book. I'm no professional, but I have enough tools and knowledge to make some fixes when appropriate.
Anyway, this is a big step up! It's in working condition but also serves as a really neat piece that I will use to display some book materials - likely an unbound page block or something similar. It's
incredibly heavy - probably 50 pounds or so. My wife couldn't really wrap it, she had a hard enough time getting it from the car to the house, so I just couldn't go in the laundry room for a few days while it sat on the floor. She told my three-and-a-half year old about it, which is always a gamble when trying to keep a surprise. But she did a great job and it wasn't until I was opening the door to the room that she could no longer contain herself and yelled "IT'S A BOOK PRESSER FOR YOU!"
I'm very pleased, overall
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Originally Posted by amd013
