As Director of Operations for the Museum of Printing, Mitchel Ahern is present at the scene of dozens of letterpress shop end-of-life events, where he says things like, “I know this is an emotional time, but I do thank you, and your father, for preserving these historic printing artifacts,” and “We appreciate your stewardship of these materials for the next generation of printers and print historians,” and “Wow, this is a lot of stuff - is there any other way out of the basement?”
In this presentation, Mitchel will tell true stories of retrieving mountains of printing materials on a short timeline; managing expectations of the family, the pain of leaving things behind, discovering cartons of materials left at the museum, the promise and terror of the phrase “we’ll just drop it off”, dealing with cranky old printers, how to deal with questionable materials, and what exactly does “dock height” mean.
He will cover the ambiguity of donation descriptions, packing, crating, getting things out of cellars, and into cars, trucks, vans and trailers. He’ll talk about identifying presses, type, and strange objects that might, or might not, have something to do with printing. There will be discussion of selling presses, type, cabinets, paper, ink and other material to printers, decorators and the general public.
