Last weekend while visiting a friend who lives in Naperville, IL, I, along with my whole family, made a visit to the Historic Naper Settlement. This place is a huge outdoor museum and features preserved and historic Civil War era buildings, among them, a print shop. I have to admit I was pretty surprised at how puffed up with pride I felt when I walked in that building, and immediately felt a sense of kinship with those folks who put ink on paper hundreds of years ago.
I also learned a few things about our fantastic industry that I never knew. For one, did you know that the phrase “upper case” and “lower case” is a reference to the individual letters being stored in tall cases, and the ones in the upper case were, you guessed it, the capital letters and the ones in the lower case were the small guys. Huh. Twenty years in the industry and I never knew that. But now that I do, this is just one little anecdotal nugget that I will store away for just the occasion that might call for such a tidbit. And it got me thinking...
If this print shop exists here in Illinois, where else can people go to get a little dose of history?
And the answer?
LOTS OF PLACES.
So here you go, folks, my early Independence Day gift to you—A whole SLEW of places in this country and around the world that you can visit to get your print history on.
Please enjoy my suggestions below, and let me know if you’ve been to any of them, what you thought, and if there are any missing.
- Print House—St. Mary's City, MD.
- Franklin Court Printing Office—322 Market St., Philadelphia
- Printing Museums—The grandaddy of them all, this lists many museums and attractions around the world that feature printing presses.
- Print Shop at Naper Settlement—523 S. Webster St., Naperville, IL
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- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Blogger, author, consultant, coach and all around evangelist for the graphic arts industry, Kelly sold digital printing for 15 years so she understands the challenges, frustrations and pitfalls of building a successful sales practice. Her mission is to help printers of all sizes sell more stuff. Kelly's areas of focus include sales and marketing coaching, enabling clients to find engagement strategies that work for them and mentoring the next generation of sales superstars.
Kelly graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Political Science and, among other notable accomplishments, co-founded the Windy City Rollers, a professional women's roller derby league. She is also the mother of two sets of twins under the age of ten, so she fears nothing.