Open and shut

I'm in the process of making a new typewriter manual for The Good Companion Model 5 and I just couldn't resist sharing a couple of the photos.

News just in: The Imperial Typewriter factory in Leicester, UK, was raided yesterday and 33 illegal workers arrested. Leicester has a large community with origins in India and Pakistan who have found UK borders alternately open and shut.  Read the full story...

Olivetti apparel

The inevitable T-shirt. The previous Antares and Groma designs are pretty much redundant logos. This one is too, but Olivetti's still trading under a different flag. If you stare at it long enough - it looks like a Japanese character. Just realised the animation might put some viewers in a trance - if so, enjoy...

Olivetti braggadocio

Having previously pooh-poohed the Olivetti logo of the 50s, 60s and 70s as being neither pictorial nor consistently applied, the celebration of Giovanni Pintori's work by ninonbooks prompted a revisit. I don't know if it was drawn by him but my conclusion: it is a glorious logo.

Have a play with it. Right click to download your very own hi-res bitmap here.

I don't have access to the fonts used in the advertising, though Bodoni italic is a good start for words like Lettera etc. The namestyle on Sottsass'es Valentine is appropriately, for a red plastic typewriter with orange bobbin-knobs, set in Braggadocio. On contemporary machines, so's Adler. And cruelly mis-applied in Boston.

Channel blues

Have good photography and an active Typosphere helped to inflate prices of used typewriters? You quite often see people on ebay offering, say, a Remington Noiseless Portable with a reserve of £300 - needless to say, they don't sell.

I was I was keeping an eye on a Corona 4 in Duco Channel Blue on ebay - just idle curiosity, you know - and which did sell for a very high price, as did this pretty ordinary-looking Underwood from the same seller.  I have ones just like them which cost around £20 a few years ago.

Then there's the article posted yesterday on Technorati about old typers being a good investment. Anyone starting to think about insurance yet? And so much for my dreams one day of finding (and affording) a Lavender and gold C4! 

Has the sad day may have arrived when a used typewriter costs many times more than the postage?

This is what a £113 Corona 4 in Channel Blue looks like and...

...this is what a £20 Corona 4 in Channel Blue looks like

Flat Lake

This coming weekend 3 June:
Irish literary and arts festival Flat Lake discounts entry fee if you bring a typewriter.

...and a Malling-Hansen reference for Richard.