The Rolls Royce of hand fed platen presses, and big brother to the Colts Armory press - I’ve been working on restoring one of the few remaining Thomson Lareate Half Super Royal presses in the country. Somewhere I have a photo of Edwin Grabhorn working at his Laureate printing some japanese woodblocks I get that same crazed grin on my face whenever I see this press in action.

I saved this one from a little printshop down in Portland OR. In a few days time it would have been stripped of its inking system, and doomed to a life of die-cutting (the sad demise of many fine heavy platens).

This is 3600lbs of pure parallel impression -

Some of the photos are a little rough - but you get the idea.

I have a pair of videos over at YouTube showing the press in operation:

Thomson Lareate videos:  short / long