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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Pictures at an exhibition (of typewriter madness)

It's too late to be typecasting -- I don't want to disturb fellow typewriter collectors spending the night at Herman Price's house -- but here are a few photos with brief comments that will give you an idea of the fun we had today.

Steve Lehman and Peter Weil discuss an Antares:


A few shelves of Herman's collection:


Jett Morton's Lego typewriter mechanism:



We compared an earlier and a later Alpina (notice the carriage return levers):


Peter presented some great research on an Oliver cigar box that he found, sold by a pharmacy in the town where the Oliver was made:



Steve and Herman:


Jett shows us a Sears (Smith-Corona) with changeable type:


Steve's mint red Underwood Champion was soon to find a new owner:


Devin (Duffy Moon), Peter, Jack Knarr, and Herman enjoy a variety of modern portables:



Peter shows us a framed Royal ad, probably from the late '20s. Is it an oil painting or "oilette" print?


At Herman's office there are still more machines, such as these "typewhiters":


... and these colorful portables:


In addition to a heap of typewriter talk, we had lots of good food and good laughs.

Now here are a couple of overviews of the main room in Herman's basement (which is still less than half of his collection). You can click these to enlarge them.




15 comments:

  1. Amazing. It's all great, but I'm partial to those severe duty chromed Olivers in the background.

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  2. Hello and many greetings from overseas! This is fantastic!!!

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  3. What a collection! He must surely hold the record of most impressive/ comprehensive gathering of typewriters - I've never seen anything like it and it makes all our efforts look quite humble in comparison :-)

    Thanks for sharing these pictures, Richard, the type-in looks like a lot of fun and you couldn't have picked a better place to host it.

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  4. Very impressive! I need to show this to my wife to make my collection look smaller.

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  5. Hi Richard,

    Intersting! Is that Smith-Corona perhaps the same model as in the interrobang advert you provided me with? Do you happen to remember which model it was...?

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  6. Fantastic collection, and an excellent setting for a gathering of fellow typewriter nerds! (:

    It makes me wish I had the scratch to travel more, to go see the *real* collectors collections. I'm content with my own small herd, but it's gotta be a thrill to enter a room that's wall to wall and floor to ceiling full of lovingly restored writin' iron. I only wonder how Herman keeps the dust off of his machines. That's just an insane amount of nooks & crannies to keep clean! :D

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  7. I have to share this post far and wide. How on Earth could anyone accuse me of being a typewriter obsessive while people like Herman inhabit the planet! I might have to change the name of my blog. This truly is Typewriter Heaven - thanks for sharing.

    Glass cabinets!
    Colour themed displays!
    Ranks of organ-pipe Olivers!
    Too much!

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  8. An ivory Adler!
    An ivory Underwood 3!
    Lego!

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  9. The pictures of this extensive collection left me absolutely BREATHLESS.

    Literally.

    I have never seen such a thing. It almost gave me a heart attack. Is this typewriter heaven? It sure looks like it!

    This is waaaay beyond amazing.

    Somehow, this needs to be documented on television or in a short movie! It must be the most comprehensive collection of typewriters EVER, don't you agree?

    If anyone else has a bigger collection than this, I'd sure like to know about it.

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  10. Very nice pictures! I agree with all the comments before: that's an amazing collection!
    On the 8th picture from above, with Steve and Herman, is that a case of three Imperial B's? Did they sell it like that, or was it just to transport it cheaper to the typewriter shop? Nice!!

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  11. schrijfmachine: the case contains three Imperial B keyboard units. The keyboard/typebar unit is detachable and can be changed for one with a different style of different alphabet.

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  12. I mean, "... OR different alphabet."

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  13. Was that a Lego typewriter? Here's another Lego typewriter I came across:
    http://www.wizardworlddigital.com/we-want-this-steampunk-lego-typewriter.html

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    1. Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that one. Yes, Jett created a working index typewriter out of Legos, and Herman has made beautiful little Lego models of some of his rare machines.

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