Graphotype

GRAPHOTYPE PAGES

Enjoy the Graphotype at graphotype.net and dogtagsrus.com

My story: I own two Graphotypes 6343, none of them are in working order and one has been taken apart. I have found one serial number: 341880. A leg of one frame is broken. Both are suffering from (my) neglect. Barely covered with a blanket and some plastic sheets they are standing and laying in my open carport. I know I should treat them better but at the moment I can’t. I do not have the knowledge nor the time nor technical friends nor the money to have others restore them. In the ’90s I saved them from destruction when they were removed from the cellar of the office where I worked in Amsterdam. I managed to take them home, they almost broke my back. My idea was to use them for printing my short poems on metals sheets but I did not know if and how those machines worked and never started the project. At the end of the ’50’s or beginning of the ’60’s they had arrived in our office as a gift from one on The Netherland’s leading newspapers, now called NRC Handelsblad, who had used them for their daily newspaper and then changed to an other system. Untill the end of the ’80’s both were used intensively for printing addresslabels for a newsletter for foreign students, in combination with a printing device. That one was scrapped. I have been too busy with my music, my poetry, my voluntary associations, keeping a ’42 Dodge pick-up and a ’68 Volvo Amazon on the road and our beautiful 1916 house (and life with my partner An and her kids) in form. As far as I know there is no Graphotype community in The Netherlands although there are some firms who deal in new or WWII dogtags. I know of one retired printer in The Hague who knew those machines but we lost contact. Perhaps one day a technical angel will come this way and start this project together with me, or I ‘ll finally decide to give up and sell it all. An uncomfortable situation. They deserve better. To the scrap-heap? Never!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact info@laurensvanderzee.nl