Chandler and Price 10 x 15 Platen Press

The workhorse in our studio is our massive Chandler and Price 10 x 15 Platen Press. This was the second press we ever purchased and you can see from the pictures that it is quite a large upgrade from "Siggy". Our C&P  is known as the 'New Style' - and is easily recognized by its increased size and straight spoke flywheel compared to the 'Old Style' C&Ps (Check out a sweet photo of the C&P Old Style press flywheel here from the people at Duet Letterpress). The 'New Style' C&P is the most common type of hand fed semi automatic platen press, but has not been made for nearly 50 years and in fact ours rolled off the line in 1927.

We had been on the hunt for a C&P for a long while, but soon learnt that they are difficult to acquire. Often these beautiful machines sell via word of mouth or through forums that see them sold within days of their posting. We were fortunate to have come across a graphic designer from Courtenay, British Columbia selling his press and we quickly snagged the opportunity to purchase this bad boy. How excited were we?!? Now all we needed to do was ship our newly acquired humdinger. For those of you unfamiliar with the 'New Style' C&P, it weights 2500lbs (~1100kg) crated with a 55x48x60 inch footprint. To top it off our press was situated in a remote studio located in an open field. This presented us with a whole new set of logistic hurdles. The first shipping attempt played out like Corb Lund’s song Truck Got Stuck, with a total of three trucks getting stuck in an attempt to reach the site (with no success) where the press was located. In trying to arrange a second attempt, we discovered that because the press was located in a fairly remote part of Courtenay, BC all major shipping companies outsourced the initial retrieval of the press to the same local carrier, which after the first dismal attempt refused to pick up the press from its current location. Instead, arrangements had to be made to forklift the press from the studio, placed in a truck and then transported to a loading dock where the press could then be pick up by the local carriers. After much headache and extreme patience our press was successfully loaded and shipped to us in Saskatoon in March 2012, where it lived in our backyard garage and served as the grounds for our humble beginnings. The C&P has since been moved, along with "Siggy", in December 2012 to our current studio space.

Our C&P currently remains the backbone to all our letterpress products. If you listen close, you can probably hear its satisfying metallic clanking in the heart of Caswell Hill in Saskatoon.