OAT CITY PRESS Printers and publishers. Limited-edition chapbooks and broadsides,    poetry and short prose. ". . . always free-range vellum."

ABOUT US

Walker Rumble and Karen Donovan started Oat City Press in 1985. In 1994 we located a printing press in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. We found a place to put it, in the Riverside section of East Providence. Our press is a Vandercook series #317 cylinder letterpress, a model dating to 1934. On June 4, 1940, the Vandercook corporation delivered it new to Plimpton Press of Norwood, Massachusetts. Plimpton used it to proof the covers of Houghton Mifflin books. River Street Printing of Woonsocket subsequently acquired it from Plimpton. There weren’t many of these Vandercooks — 177 of this model, 111 of this style. Below is a list of what we've printed. Some of it is still available.

 

To order, please contact us by email info@oatcity.com or telephone (401) 437-9573. Check or money order to Oat City Press, 18 Beach Point Drive, East Providence, RI 02915.

THE LIST

Josh Russell. Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York   $50.00 [Sorry, this chapbook is SOLD OUT.] The poet and novelist Josh Russell writes short prose, factual and imagined, based on photographs. He calls them “snapshot stories.” Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York is a such a story. It evokes Alfred Stieglitz’s famous 1893 photograph of wintry Manhattan.

This is a 20-page chapbook of a single poem. Its dimensions are 4¾"×5¼". Printed in an edition of fifty, each book is numbered and signed by the author. The chapbook is printed in black and red ink with hand stenciling on each page in yellow. The line drawings throughout are by Karen Donovan. The paper is Somerset book, with Fabriano Ingres yellow cover. Single gathering, hand-stitched, and glued into a wraparound soft cover.

 

Mark Andres. A Day in the Park  $15.00 Short fiction by the Portland, Oregon, artist and writer. This is a 16-page, single-signature chapbook measuring 5¼×10½ inches. It is printed in two colors throughout. The book is illustrated by the author. Handbound in a soft cover.

 

Walker Rumble. Carnage: A Gilded Age Birdbook  $16.00 Carnage is a series of entries from a late-nineteenth-century birdbook. The author has embellished these descriptions. The result is a series of droll tales, stories from an age that shot at everything. The book dismays environmentalists and offends hunters — a difficult bankshot. This is an edition of fifty-five, handbound in hard cover. The book is printed in two colors and measures 5"×6½".

 

Oat City Broadsides ______________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Moxley. Wreath of a Similar Year   $12.00 Poem by the author of Imagination Verses. A medieval monk. Explicit. Expliceat! Ludere scriptor eat $12.00 “It is finished. Let it end! Let the scribe go out to play.” Featuring a large woodblock “E.” Rumble/Donovan. Iowa Eats $15.00 Tale and recipe for Hawkeye pea and cheese salad. Text by Rumble; illustration by Donovan.

 

Oat City Broadsides In Printing History ______________________________________________________

 

Swifts: A Nineteenth-Century Printing Hall of Fame In twenty years, from the end of the American Civil War until the mid-1880s, a group of printers competence and fame in a manner rarely rivaled in the ranks of labor.  These men raced at setting type by hand, and the printing trades called them "Swifts." By the 1880s these Swifts competed on a tournament circuit, traveling from city to city in much the manner of modern bowlers. They became working-class heroes. The best of them all was a New York Times compositor named George Arensberg. In 1870, in New York, Arensberg--shopmates called him “the Velocipede”--did the impossible when in one hour he cracked a 5,000-letter barrier, typesetting's Everest.

Swifts: A Nineteenth-Century Printing Hall of Fame comprises twelve small broadsides, each featuring a notable compositor in biographical sketch, period portrait engraving, and charted tournament data. The broadsides measure 6¼"×10½" and are printed in two colors. The collection is hand-set in 14-point Monotype Bembo 270 with Bodoni and Franklin Gothic titling and is printed on a Vandercook 317 letterpress. The paper is Fabriano Ingres Heavyweight. Walker Rumble wrote the text, leaning hard on A Collation of Facts Relative to Fast Typesetting (1887), a book compiled by three of the Swifts: William C. Barnes, Joseph W. McCann, and Alexander Duguid.

Swifts II: Another Nineteenth-Century Printing Hall of Fame Betting people, many of them  fellow journeymen compositors at the Chicago Tribune, backed Clinton “The Kid” DeJarnatt at the 1886 Chicago National Championship of fast typesetting. Alas, DeJarnatt was nervous and finished last. The Kid’s tale and ten others comprise this second collection of small broadsides. The collection is hand-set in 11-point Monotype Bembo with Franklin Gothic titling. It was printed in the summer of 1997 on a Vandercook 317 letterpress. Walker Rumble wrote the text from primary sources.

Printed in a limited edition of 45 sets, each broadside measures 6x15 and is printed in two colors. The collection is hand-set in 14-point Monotype Bembo 270 with Garamond italic titling and is printed on a Vandercook 317 letterpress. The paper is Domestic Etching. Walker Rumble wrote the text.

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