The founding of our press is similar to that of many other private presses, being an outgrowth of a boy’s curiosity and his longing to emulate an adult’s craft. The Tortoise Press is a second-generation press, established by my father, Marvin Lee Robinson, in 1960. He was an architect in Lincoln, Nebraska. He had used a tiny press as a boy growing up in the early 1920s in St. Joseph, Missouri, a river town once on the frontier’s edge.
Advertisements for small printing outfits, such as sold by the Kelsey Company, were once common in magazines like Popular Mechanics. His 2½ x 4-inch press with a tube of ink and several small packages of type must have provided bountiful fulfillment, only to one day be put away when other interests called.
As a young boy thirty years later, I stumbled upon the press and a cigar box of scattered type in the attic of his boyhood home. It was a great find, and I used it until my father talked an older friend into giving me a larger press. The 7 x 11 Pearl treadle press had been given to my beneficiary by his father in 1904. His first printing job was a thank you card in which he wrote, “I am printing this on my own printing press. Papa gave it to me for Christmas.” The press had been used by the Burlington Railroad to print time schedules and tickets in their Lincoln depot.
When we picked up the press, it was on the second story of a large coach house behind an imposing residence. Climbing the narrow, steep stairs to retrieve our plunder was thrilling. Shafts of morning light filtered through dusty window panes and hanging cobwebs, falling on a large cast-iron press with an entire cabinet of type beside it. Both likely untouched for forty years. The serial number 146 indicates it was cast about 1876. The intoxicating scent of dried ink and dusty type cases from long ago lingers in my memory.
While I kept busy during my school years printing jobs for my parents’ friends, my father rediscovered the hobby and established the Tortoise Press. He printed three small cookbooks that he illustrated, initially with linoleum block cuts and later wood engravings. He cut over a hundred illustrations for the books, plus a fourth book, Rocky Road to Riches, that was not finished before his death. The cookbooks were family endeavors, with the recipes collected from my mother’s and friends’ repertoires, sampled for suitability around our family’s dinner table, and then set in type and printed.
The memories of my happy days in the basement print shop flood back to me every time I open a particular cabinet containing inks and galleys of type and smell that distinctive aroma of the past. No fine wine has yet been able to surpass the richness of the aroma of ink and solvents which that cabinet holds.
Advertisements for small printing outfits, such as sold by the Kelsey Company, were once common in magazines like Popular Mechanics. His 2½ x 4-inch press with a tube of ink and several small packages of type must have provided bountiful fulfillment, only to one day be put away when other interests called.
As a young boy thirty years later, I stumbled upon the press and a cigar box of scattered type in the attic of his boyhood home. It was a great find, and I used it until my father talked an older friend into giving me a larger press. The 7 x 11 Pearl treadle press had been given to my beneficiary by his father in 1904. His first printing job was a thank you card in which he wrote, “I am printing this on my own printing press. Papa gave it to me for Christmas.” The press had been used by the Burlington Railroad to print time schedules and tickets in their Lincoln depot.
When we picked up the press, it was on the second story of a large coach house behind an imposing residence. Climbing the narrow, steep stairs to retrieve our plunder was thrilling. Shafts of morning light filtered through dusty window panes and hanging cobwebs, falling on a large cast-iron press with an entire cabinet of type beside it. Both likely untouched for forty years. The serial number 146 indicates it was cast about 1876. The intoxicating scent of dried ink and dusty type cases from long ago lingers in my memory.
While I kept busy during my school years printing jobs for my parents’ friends, my father rediscovered the hobby and established the Tortoise Press. He printed three small cookbooks that he illustrated, initially with linoleum block cuts and later wood engravings. He cut over a hundred illustrations for the books, plus a fourth book, Rocky Road to Riches, that was not finished before his death. The cookbooks were family endeavors, with the recipes collected from my mother’s and friends’ repertoires, sampled for suitability around our family’s dinner table, and then set in type and printed.
The memories of my happy days in the basement print shop flood back to me every time I open a particular cabinet containing inks and galleys of type and smell that distinctive aroma of the past. No fine wine has yet been able to surpass the richness of the aroma of ink and solvents which that cabinet holds.
Letterpress Books & Assorted Cards Printed by My Family
Letterpress Books, Lino Cuts, &
Misc. Printing by John Robinson
Misc. Printing by John Robinson