Oak Creek Historical Society

Print Shop

 

The print shop depicts what a small printing business looked like around the turn of the century. Unlike most of the artifacts at our complex, the print shop equipment was originally located at Elkhart Lake Wisconsin, rather than the Oak Creek area.

 

The hand operated press works just fine and is used to print up souvenir cards that we give to our young visitors. There are many fine pieces of old typeset here along with a printer's stone.

 

The printer's stone was used as part of an early lithography process.  An image was drawn onto the stone with a grease based crayon. The stone was then gummed with gun arabic and inked with oil based paint. The image was transferred to paper through a printing press.  

 

The collection also includes an antique mimeograph machine, and other equipment used by printers in the past.