Vandercook Universal One, DATE
Why we love this: It's the best engineered small Vandercook – but we also love this particular press’s history with one of America’s premier printing institutions. This was the second Vandercook of Boxcar Press. We bought this press right after we moved to New York and after befriending David Pankow at RIT. During one of conversations, David mentioned to us, “Oh by the way, we've had a Vandercook sitting on our loading dock for several years. I'm sure they'd be happy to get it out of the way.” We said we'd be happy to help. The press has a little sticker on the carriage saying MINE. David explained this had been the personal press of Archie Proven (an instructor of typography at RIT, now retired). The sticker was there to say, "hey student, stand back. This press is not yours." We're proud to have a press with such a great provenance and use it primarily for printing fine press broadsides these days.