The Story of Our Imperial Press

In our workshop, we do a lot of foil blocking and it was recommended to us that for the best equipment, we needed to look back in time. We turned to Les Baynam from Homeward Bound.

Les had an Imperial Press for us. It was made in cast iron and so is massively robust with a big print area. Made in 1860 by a Joseph Lee, the press originally ran on gas (heating the machine for the foil blocking), but Les restored it for us so it would run on electricity. When the press was delivered to us, we noticed something unusual: a spelling mistake on a 160 year old machine. These presses were made in moulds and whoever had created the one used for our machine misspelt ‘IMPERIAL’ as ‘IMRERIAL’. And the mistake has survived all this time. 

It is a fantastic machine that sees constant use in our workshop, and is more reliable than some of our modern technology. We are very grateful for the excellent craftsmanship of Joseph Lee all that time ago.