The exhibit features everything that a typical local printer would have had in the late 1800's, including hand-set type and a foot treadle powered letterpress.
The shop is the creation of local resident Mike Wolff, the owner of Northwest Graphics in Winsted. "My grandfather was a printer at the beginning of the twentieth century and I have a picture of him setting type in his shop when he was a young man. I was always interested in what he did and wanted to learn more. It's so different from the way we do things today."
It took Wolff several years to find everything needed for the exhibit. "The museum had a non-working printing press and a cabinet of type, but finding another press was a challenge." Fortunately, Paul Goulet, from Goulet Printery in Barkhamsted, was willing to let the museum have his 1880 Gordon letterpress. "We didn't realize that this was a historic press until I began to do some research. George Gordon built the first commercially successful letterpress in the 1850's, the first real advance in printing since the time of Benjamin Franklin. This press can print almost two thousand pages an hour, 100 times faster than the old Franklin hand presses. That must have been as big a leap forward in its time as computers are for us today."
"A 'living history' exhibit makes a much stronger impression than static displays, especially on children," said Wolff. "I want people to see what printers actually did over one hundred years ago. Letterpresses can print almost anything that modern offset presses can, including photos and multicolor work."
In addition to giving demonstrations, he plans to print items for use in the museum and for sale in the gift shop. The museum also has hundreds of letterpress plates from the newspaper Lure of the Litchfield Hills, depicting old local scenes and events. They hope to reproduce many of those pictures and make them available for viewing again for the first time in over fifty years.
The museum's Gordon letterpress was recently added to the prestigious Briar Press Museum (http://www.briarpress.org), a web site featuring printing history, plus photos and information on historically significant printing presses.
The museum is located at 11 Front Street in Collinsville. The hours are 1-4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday and Thursdays from 1-8 p.m. The print shop can usually be seen in operation on Saturday or Sunday.