Printing Museums — Old World Craft Lives On

“I just packed up a press to send to Austria,” he says. “People drive for hours to come here and buy a press. They know presses can get damaged when shipped, so they take them home themselves. Letterpress has become very popular again.”

In addition to running jobs, Runfeldt restores the equipment that he moves on to other letterpress aficionados, from Excelsior platens to Chandler & Price platens and Vandercook & Challenge proof presses. Runfeldt named his shop, naturally, after the press line and well before the Internet age, so he couldn’t have foreseen the number of calls and e-mails he’d received from people thinking his shop is the official Excelsior company.