ludlow matrices
I am in the process of acquiring and setting up a Ludlow machine here in South Australia and was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of a family of Plantin face matrices for the Ludlow. I am looking for mats in 12pt, 14pt, and 18pt in Roman and the same sizes in Italic. Plantin seems to be little used or available in Australia so I am prepared to purchase from other locations.
On a related theme , can anyone help with a current email for Don Black? I have tried both contact adresses on his web site with no response. I was hoping he might have the Plantin mats I need but can’t seem to raise an answer from him.
Many thanks.
Ron
Don’s email is:
Don Black Linecasting Service
He can sometimes be a bit slow in answering because he is traveling.
Jeff - To prevent spam and for privacy reasons, I have edited your reply with a link to Don Black’s contact rather than his email address. For an explanation, see Email addresses and spam in Classifieds & forums
Ron.
Don is in Florida till May, although he does respond to emails. He is having shoulder problems and is in alot pain. Tha may slow him down some.
We talk pretty regular on the phone, so I will get him to watch his email for you.
Give me a list of what font styles you would all want. I will help you find them. You may have to take them without cabinets, because of the weight & bulk shipping problem.
What Don would find you, would be Guaranteed complete, because he checks them all out and cleans them. What I would find, would be ones I happen to run into or left overs or doubles of what I get. I have a collection I am building, to use for my service that I am going to start offering.
GOOD LUCK
I recently acquired a Ludlow and was wondering if there is anyone in the Seattle area that is running one? Thanks, Bill
willmck425, i too have a ludlow, i set all my type on it, i’m not real close but but you are welcome to come by and we can play with my ludlows, i’m in southeastern Massachusetts, there arent too many ludlows left in my area.
Don might be out, but there are people at his business still helping us with our needs. I purchased some mat last week.
dickg, thanks for the invite. I wish I could come see your Ludlow in action. I’m working on identifying the fonts I have in the 4-cabinets that came with the machine, acquiring some of the Ludlow tools I’ll need and then I’ll power it up and see what I have.
Willmck425, i’ve been collecting ludlow mats since the mid 1970’s, now have 18 cabinets of mats and about 100 fonts on galleys. Recently i bought a tool from Don Black that will identify your fonts, i thought it wouldn’t work but its the best thing i ever bought, i have many fonts that are mislabeled and Don’s tool has helped me identify a lot of type, i strongly recommend getting one. You know i’m only a 1 hours drive from you, if you hop a plane to Boston and rent a car i’m only a 1 hour drive south. Dick G.
dickg, with that many fonts, how did you ever know what you had without the mat matrix gauge? That identification system was close to the genius of the Linotype.
some type i got to know from using the stuff for 50 years, some cases had lost their labels and i really didn’t know what the type was, i never thought much about trying to identify the few unmarked cases until i printed my type specimens and someone pointed out that ludlow didn’t make vogue, i had several cases from different print shops that were marked vogue. So i bought the mat gauge from Don Black, i read the 6 lines of instructions and started to use the tool, i couldn’t identify anything, i was so mad at Don Black it wasn’t funny then while putting the gauge back in its holder i noticed i had flipped it over and the side i was reading was clearly marked for italic type, i was trying to identify roman type, boy am i that dumb, i guess i am. Once i flipped it over it worked great. Should have bought one years ago. Don knew i was getting an intertype and sent me a couple of books on intertype, if i can’t figure out 6 lines of instructions how the heck am i going to figure out a couple of hundred pages of instructions????? I can only hope i’m as happy with the intertype as i am with the ludlow gauge. GO INTERTYPE (had to say that for Don) Dick G.
musikwerke, with all those fonts you have and the area in ME you are in you didn’t happen to get the mats fromNew England Graphics in Gardiner???? i think he only had one cabinet.
dickg, yup, I did, years ago. Nice guy. I got interested in purchasing his building also but I’m too much of a ‘country boy’ to live where there’s no land a no parking.
I passed up a lot more Ludlow stuff over the years and now kick myself because the majority of it had gone to scrap by the time I returned.
I’ve always wanted a Linotype or Intertype, preferably an Intertype. They’re all but gone from this neck of the woods too.