Line-o-Scribe Machine (Letterpress)

I found this Photo (by Arwen O'Reilly) and this article (by Natalie Zee Drieu) on http://blog.craftzine.com
"We just got this great letterpress from the folks over at the LoBot Gallery in West Oakland. They were trying to clear out some space in their warehouse, and of course we just love cluttering ours up! We're picking up the press itself tomorrow, but brought the type cabinet back with us and laid out the trays on the table saw, as you can see in the photos. The press came with a mixed bunch of wooden and metal type blocks; beautiful objects themselves, but I can't wait to start using the press, too! We found a type block that says "famous maker"--how cool is that? The press is a Line-O-Scribe Sign Machine made by the Morgan Sign Machine Co., from Chicago, back in the 50s. There's are a bunch of pre-made type blocks saying things like "all prices as marked," so I think it was largely used commercially for printing up fliers and signs for stores. It's amazing to think that this was once a really useful machine!"

I recently encountered the above mentioned machine, also with an assorted bunch of letter blocks, tucked away in a closet at a local community center in Maplewood, NJ. It has not been used for some years. I'm beginning to formulate a local art project which might put it to use.

I found this on a posting from
www.briarpress.org
Type in Line-o-Scribe for the further discussion:
"I think that you are referring to a Line-O-Scribe show card press. The term “writer” does not make sense to me, but there were a plethora of Line-O-Scribe proof presses in different sizzes and configurations manufactured well into the 1960’s and possibly later. I did have a catalog for these at home and searched for it last night to no avail. I then realized that I had given it, along with a Line-O-Scribe press to a historical museum. If it is indeed any one of a number of Line-O-Scribe presses, they are basically very simple machines and it should not be too hard to determine if it is complete. They did generally come with a plate that could be inserted into the bed if type is set-up and locked directly into the press. This plate could be removed it the type to be printed was already in a galley. The plate compensated for the thickness of the bottom of a galley."