In six days, I’ll be leaving the midwest. It is bittersweet, of course, and I’ve been lucky to have met some pretty amazing folks and seen a slew of inspiring things. I’m calling these next few days my “Farewell to Iowa” week–a time in which I try to cram in the last bits of socializing, exploring, and getting around to the outings I’ve been putting off. I kicked off this celebration Saturday with a trip to Mt. Pleasant, home of the Old Threshers Hall. What are threshers, you ask? I still am not clear on that, but each year they host the Midwest Printers’ Fair, which is a little like a cross between Antiques Roadshow and Comic-Con for letterpress enthusiasts. I’m lucky enough to have a fella who likes going to things like this, and still (I think) considers outings like these to be “dates.” Our conversation sounded a lot like this:
Me: Any interest in going to the Printers’ Fair Saturday?
Andrew: What’s that?
Me: A bunch of old printers with lots of cool old tools, and prints, and things for sale. I was going to go early though, because they sell stuff flea-market style in the morning.
Andrew: Cool. How early is “early?”
Me: Well…
Andrew: Oh, man. You mean old-man-early. Like seven.
Me: Well, maybe eight.
(I should interject here that Mt. Pleasant is an hour’s drive from Iowa City.We must also add an hour for stumbling around, waking up and drinking coffee.)
I was a little surprised he was game, but I think it helped that the Threshers Hall is also home to a museum devoted to early farm equipment and relics of the prairie. A friend of his had told him about it recently, so he was sold. On the drive he said I shouldn’t be surprised if I looked up and he wasn’t there. “I might go check out the farm stuff if I get overloaded on printing,” he said. He’s a good sport about these things. I try to pick art-related outings carefully so as not to wear him out. So far, he seems to enjoy them, and I love a dude who loves the art museum.
One of our first dates involved printing demos at the UI Center for the Book, so I know he’s interested to a certain point. (He pulled a print that is still hanging on his refrigerator.)
We did not leave at 8. It seems that was a wee bit ambitious for a Saturday, for both of us. We rolled into Mt. Pleasant at 11:30, which was well past the peak period for seasoned printers. Several folks who had come to sell their wares were already packing up and calling it a day. But we did get to peruse the type cabinets and tools for a while. I was tempted to buy a little tabletop press–it was calling to me in the way that sock monkey does in the Pier 1 ads, but I resisted, thinking it’d be better to hold out for a bigger model. So then we wandered through and checked out the rooms where the Threshers keep their own presses–everything from tiny tabletop platens to these beasts that are so tall you’d need a ladder to reach the inking rollers. Some things we found:
Great post, and I love the pictures! Now I’m longing for some similar event I could visit.