Typewriter Love

Vera the Letterpress isn't the only piece of vintage machinery we use at inviting; all of our Thank You notes that get tucked in with your orders are printed on our 1941 Royal Arrow manual typewriter:

Our Ebay score, and the start of what might one day turn into a collection.
It doesn't look as dingy in person, promise!

Letterpress printed text-weight sheets perfect for typing!

When WWII started, Royal stopped making typewriters and switched to war manufacturing.
There are rare Royal typewriters made for the US Navy in 1942, which you can find on Ebay,
but mostly they made machine guns and airplane parts.
They picked up typewriter production again in 1945.

Using this took some getting used to: there's no 1 key (must use a capital I), exclamation points are made with ' backspace .  Weird things like that. At least there is an @ symbol! It's fun though, hides my messy handwriting, and its age adds quite a bit of character to letters, like printing with metal type vs polymer plates in the studio does.

I usually give names to my favorite things: ex, Vera is the letterpress, Esther the bass guitar... Looking at the popular baby names of 1941, I'm leaning towards Frances (#31) or Margaret (#12), ooh, or Peggy (#39)!
I'm liking Peggy, what do you think?

Cheers,
ashley