TH Pullan & Sons were an engineering company in Glasgow that specialised in printing machinery and proof presses. They went into liquidation c.1906, so it is difficult finding any actual information about the company or their products.
This press is a wonderful example of industrial revolution engineering. Fully hand crafted and even after years of misuse and neglect, is still completely flat and square.
More of the story is here.
The Korrex Berlin Hand letterpress proofing press exemplifies German engineering. Made in the 1970’s at Max Simmel Maschinenfabrik, in Berlin, Germany, the Korrex press even now runs as smooth as silk.
The series presents a historical narrative that traces early contact between representatives of the British Crown, clergy associated with Church Missionary Society (based in London, England), and Māori chiefs of the far north of Aotearoa New Zealand of the early 1800s. The encounters occur prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and illustrate how an influential outcome of the early relationship between key participants was the development of a unique alphabet for the Māori language and the printing of religious texts in the Māori language.
The importance of these developments are presented against a backdrop in which communication between Māori and the first settlers, the whaling fleets traversing the Pacific, and the fledgling forestry industry, was strained by the lack of understanding of cultural protocols, hierarchy, and language.
While Māori orthography, Tikanga Māori, has been recorded by various individuals, this paper focuses on the relationship between Rev. Thomas Kendall, and Arikinui (high chiefs) Te Morenga and Waikato of Taiamai/Ngā Puhi. These leaders were future focused and undertook to establish the pathway for the first hand written and printed texts for Māori, in their own language.
As any who run an older machine of any kind, there are challenges in keep them operational. So it was when we were about to start printing the Fennel series that instead of the satisfying whir of the inking drum motor, there was a single ominous click, then … nothing.
