I stumbled across these tickets at an Oregon historical society museum last fall, and thought to snap a photo of them, something I've been trying to do more often when I see interesting printed ephemera while visiting these wonderful little museums.
It's a reminder of the importance of the printed piece. Even when printing becomes the detritus of everyday life it serves to tie our lives, experiences and activities to a string of human history. A dance ticket stub, bus transfer, postcard, tradesman association or union card becomes a point on the map of an individual's life. These days we're lucky if a community makes the effort to preserve its historic grange hall or community dance hall from those times in which these structures were the center of American social life. These buildings, once quaking with life, provided refuge for young folks from societal restrictions and older folks from the rigor of the work day; they housed secrets and celebrations, where revelers began new branches of family trees or just caught up with the news from the neighbors. Many of these halls have been completely wiped from history by fire, decay, new development, etc. Often times it's the printed pieces that remain to tell the story, as is the case of the tickets pictured above. The tickets, printed in the 1920s and still with us nearly 100 years later, demonstrate the role that the printer played in telling that story of these lives and communities. Here in Portland we have the Every Sunday Square Dance, which is a weekly community dance held at the historic Village Ballroom. What a perfect opportunity to use the inspiration of the Silver Spray Gardens tickets to print some tickets for this volunteer-run event. I came up with what is pictured bellow. Offset printed on utility grade #110 index using two spot colors, the tickets were also mechanically numbered on a platen press, and then die-cut using a custom die for this job. I've always been wary of using the term "duplicator" to describe small presses. By their very nature, all printing presses duplicate things, so the term doesn't offer much in the way of class distinction or describe a machine's capability. Nonetheless, small format offset machines have suffered a bit of an identity crisis since their introduction to the market in the late 1930s.
Sheet size was frequently used to draw the line between the "duplicator" class offset machine and actual printing press. Any machine that could accommodate a sheet size over 10" x 15" fell into the printing press category, and below that resided the duplicators. This was a little confusing, as small offset machines were originally built with common office form sheet sizes in mind, but those same press models were modified by manufacturers over the years to accommodate larger press sheet sizes and a greater variety of job work. There were other features of smaller offset presses that were used by some to define the class. If instead of utilizing constant bearer pressure between cylinders, the machine featured spring loaded cylinders, the press was considered a duplicator or "small format" press. If the machine had fewer than three inking form rollers, the press was considered small format, and so on. Printing historian Fred Roblin, in The November 1965 anniversary issue of The American Pressman, presented this name problem more eloquently and succinctly than is done here, and concluded that "regardless of the name ascribed to it, the duplicator is generally an offset press, embodying a feeder, a planographic plate, an indirect print on a rotary unit with inking and dampening systems, and a delivery." |