Seeking Information Help for Printing History Research Project

I am researching Adam Ramage and his surviving presses, with a view to updating Milton Hamilton’s 1942 essay on Ramage with more detailed information about the man and his life as well as his production and the surviving examples of it. However, I am running into difficulties finding information and I have a feeling that there are Briar Press members who might have clues as to the resources for locating such info.

For example, I am trying to locate the sole surviving American Ruthven press, which was at one time in the Russell Hughes Museum in Ephrata, PA; it was bought by Bill Donecker of Ephrata and then sold by him later to someone he doesn’t remember. I have slender evidence that the industrial designer Lurelle V. Guild, of Darien, CT, owned a hand press that may have been a Ramage, but which has not been traced from Guild (after his 1985 death) to its present home. The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn., MI has a Ramage Common press but the serial number, platen and bed dimensions, and other details are not published and I can not get a response from the museum staff. The International Printing Museum has a Ramage Common press and a Ramage Proof press but I have been unable to get photos, serial numbers, or measurements from them. There is, or was, a wooden Common press at the Mormon site of the Grandin Print Shop in Palmyra, NY; it looks like a Ramage but I have not been able to get a response to my several inquiries for information about it. The Landis Valley Museum near Lancaster, PA has a Ramage Screw press, but I have been unable to obtain from them information about its serial number or the other data I collect on all the hand presses: platen and bed dimensions and a snapshot photo of the entire press.

I am seriously handicapped by lack of funds for travel to these sites for personal investigation, and I rely primarily on email for correspondence. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for current locations of the two missing presses, or contacts who might know (email works best for me from my present location in Costa Rica), or even personal visits by folks who live near one of the above sites to obtain the information I’m seeking.

I plan to publish the essay in the Spring or Summer of 2010 and I would like to make it as complete and comprehensive as possible. I have found a great deal of information about Ramage and his surviving presses not previously published, so I believe this work will fill a need. I certainly appreciate any assistance I can get in obtaining as much as possible of the missing information.

Bob Oldham
([email protected])
North American Hand Press Database
Doswell, Virginia and Turrialba, Costa Rica

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