We have three Boston presses which can print paper up to A5 size, but their main use is for postcards and business cards. One is a platen press from Karl Krause, G.m.b.H. Berlin C19 from 1910.

Our two Hohner Hobo presses are from the mid-1960s, have three ink rollers and a little mechanical lever-activated spring that shoots the printed card into a wooden box next to the press. The operator can feed another sheet with one hand, print with the other one and doesn’t have to remove the sheet from the press. Quite a spectacle! This Boston is a gift from Silvio Antiga, owner of Tipoteca Italiana in Cornuda. He found the widow of the Italian distributor for Hohner in Rome who had seven of those platen presses in her basement, still in their original crates, wrapped in straw. I persuaded Silvio, who is an obsessive collector of presses and type, to donate one of them to us in Berlin. So now we have a very old, original an unused Hohner Hobo Boston press.