Paul Aken's Letterpress Museum Chicago ~~~~~~~~~~

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Welcome to The Past- Paul Aken's Letterpress Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Paul stands beside one of his old presses, while his "Welcome to the Past" caricature oversees operations.

Shelves 'o Presses.. Too many presses to fit on the workbench, so Paul has filled the shelves with smaller presses.  - and this is just one photo of one small section of his collection! (more to come after my scanner warms up...)

Paul is the now proud owner of the original Kelsey Company sign, bought at auction in 2009. The sign visited with us for a while after the auction, but is now posted in Paul's letterpress musem in Chicago. here, Rich Polinski (Front Room Press), Paul Aken  and Sara Smith (Smith Letterpress) pose at The Excelsior Press with this classic sign. (see blogpost for March 15, 2009) One interesting anecdote about this sign. Although Paul bought it at auction in Meriden, CT in March, 2009, he could not carry it home on his flight to Chicago, so he left it with us for safekeeping. We were finally able to return it to him when we "just happened" to be in the same area of Connecticut one day -  Rich & I were picking up an 8x12 Golding Jobber and Paul was on his way north with a 12x18 Golding Art Jobber - which he was on his way to trade for a Golding Map press. The point is, how often do two friends meet, hundreds of miles from home, in the midst of rescuing or swapping old platen presses... When Paul visited us last March, I kept trying to show him "something new" from our collection. But it was to no avail. For every 'rare treasure' I showed him from our collection, he simply smiled and said. "Yup, got one of those, too..." ;) And, when I blubbered to him excitedly about our recently acquired 'ultimate Kelsey press' - the rare and intriguing Kelsey Star Jobber, his simple comment was "Got a Union Jobber?" (n.b. the Union Jobber is an even more rare Kelsey press...)

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