Oh, the perils of eBay. Not long ago, I fell to the tempation of a rather scarce specimen, a Deutsche Remington. (A little background: the Deutsche Remington is really a Torpedo. Remington partially owned Torpedo Buromaschinenwerke, and so in the European market some Torpedos were marketed as the Deutsche Remington. Remington had a habit of slapping different names on the same machine, possibly to obscure the actual numbers being manufactured. So far as I’m aware, this particular machine is one of the only ones to have turned up in the United States.)

We’ve all heard the tragedies of typewriters being destroyed in the mail. I’ve received postally-damaged typers myself a few times, though nothing too severe. I’ve even had a couple of what I call “miracle typewriters” that somehow arrived in perfect condition despite shockingly irresponsible packaging. Well, this one takes the cake. And oh, yeah, I got burned big-time.

Here is what the machine looked like before the seller shipped it:

(You like the barrel full of crushed Diet Rite cans? Classy, huh?)

And here’s what it looked like when I got it:

It was crammed into an undersized box, upside down, with no packing material. The seller obviously didn’t give a damn whether it arrived undamaged. It arrived with the right end of the carriage sticking out of a hole in the box. In one way, the typer being wedged in so tightly was a blessing because it likely saved the carriage from being ripped from the chassis. The aluminum front frame, however, is mangled. The space bar has been pushed in and shoved to the side. The shift key levers, which rest in guides attached to the frame, are bent.

I can probably reshape the frame into a semblance of its original self, and repair the mechanical damage, but it will never be the same. I’m afraid this may end up being a display-only typer.

That’s the way it is with eBay. Yous takes you chances.

Update: I’ve done the best I can with it for the time being and spiffed it up a bit. A brief writeup is now available on Machines of Loving Grace.

Further update: more prying, bending, degunking, and futzing with it after the Spawn Process went to bed last night resulted in making it mostly functional. The spacebar still doesn’t work quite right–it needs a hard whack to register, and only if it’s on the left side–the right shift key tends to stick in the down position, and the feed roller has an incapacitating flat. I’ve pulled out the platen and feed roller and am going to attempt a DIY recovering using automotive hoses before resorting to professional rerubbering.

In response to a reader’s request, here is a general outline of how I go about photographing my typewriters. By observing a few easy guidelines, I believe that anyone can achieve similar results. I don’t have any fancy equipment; my studio is the top of my basement clothes dryer, and my camera is a Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot.

First, you need a typewriter. If you do not have a typewriter, I’m sorry, but you have more problems than I can help you with.

1. Make your typewriter look good. I don’t mean just cleaning it, although that should be done as well. Wiping down the machine with a light coat of Pledge or Old English will give it a nice shine. To eliminate background distractions and make your typewriter the focus of attention, place your typewriter on a plain white surface, like posterboard. As it turns out, this is helpful for the last step.

2. Photograph your typewriter under the best possible conditions. You should have good, bright light. I can’t emphasize enough how important good lighting is to good photographs. Either shoot outside on a sunny day or underneath a soft, white indoor light. (I shoot mine underneath daylight-replicating fluorescent lights made for reptile enclosures, available at most pet stores.) A regular, bare light bulb is both too yellow and too harsh. Avoid using camera flash. Use a tripod or some other stable surface combined with a remote release or self-timer to eliminate shake. Close down the aperture as small as it will go for the sharpest detail. Don’t worry about long exposure times; you have a tripod.

3. Adjust your photo’s colors. Ideally, you set your camera’s white balance before you took the photo, but you can rarely avoid having to do some color-correction. I use Photoshop, but most of these adjustments can be done in almost any photo editing software.

Set your white point based on the background posterboard. I prefer to use Curves over Levels because unlike Levels, Curves doesn’t destroy pixel data.

Bring out the machine’s details by lightening the shadows. About 10% works for me most of the time. Too much lightening of shadows or darkening of highlights can make your photo look like one of those crappy HDR jobs, and you don’t want that–unless you like crappy HDR jobs, in which case see my comment about not having a typewriter.

Even lighting with sunlight or using indoor lighting filters will result in a little yellow cast. Go into Color Balance and adjust the sliders until the blacks look closer to true black. Deep black reflects highlights as blue, so I shift the colors closer to the blue spectrum.

Sharpen the picture just a bit.

This isn’t absolutely everything I do in post, but these basic steps ought to be enough for anyone to take great-looking typewriter photos.

As regular Machines of Loving Grace visitors might have noticed from the sidebar, 2009 is its tenth year on the ‘Web. I thought it would be fun* to hop into the Wayback Machine and visit the site as it originally looked when it first hit the Internet back in 1999. One page, twelve typewriters, zero graphics.

Also brand spanky new for 2009, Machines of Loving Grace finally has its own domain name! Now instead of navigating to that awkward sevenels.net subdirectory, you can point your browser directly to http://machinesoflovinggrace.com. Be sure to update your del.icio.us!

Two new pages recently up: All About the Remie Scout, the most comprehensive coverage anywhere of Remington’s cute little Depression-era portables family, and an expansive table of hard-to-find Remington serial number and production info courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.

Finally, visit the new MoLG forum! It’s just like the old MoLG Yahoo group, only much, much better. It’s not just about typewriters anymore; it’s for fans of all sorts of retrotech.

* I thought it would be fun, but the quest ended up entailing unearthing boxes of poorly-labeled floppy disks, finding and reconnecting the Mac’s Superdrive, and determining which of the many different copies of the page was the true original.

In the words of Monda, I am heartsick. The typewriter I have lusted after for ages, the Monarch 101, matched in its elegance only by its elusiveness, just went to someone with far deeper pockets than I. I hope whoever won it loves it as much as I have from afar.

I’m going to go cry into some vodka now.

I don’t know if any of you typewriter folk out there are subscribers to ETCetera. If you are, then you know what a well-written, high-quality publication it is. If you aren’t, well…you’re missing out. I myself put off subscribing to it until this year, and boy, what a twit I am for not having done it sooner! I used to think that it was only for high-end collectors and talked about only typewriters I could never hope to acquire. Yes, scarce machines are prominent in the publication, but in more of a “Cool! Lookit that!” way. There really is something for every level of typewriter enthusiast. If you have a collection of hundreds of typewriters, or half a dozen, or even one solitary but special typer, do yourself a favor and go to the link above and sign on. Tell’em Machines of Loving Grace sent you. If enough new subscribers come their way through this posting, I may come up with a little something as a thank you.

I’ve made a slew of small updates to Machines of Loving Grace over the past few days. The old Errata page that had lingered since the previous facelift has been folded into the Resources page and replaced with a Contact page. The Resources page itself has been fully updated and restructured to be a little more helpful. A new “Typewriters as Inspiration” link has been added under Special Galleries; it ties into a typewriter-themed album in my photo gallery. I wanted a place to include my more “artsy” typewriter photos, which are much different than the documentary photos throughout the rest of MoLG.

EDIT: I just now dumped my Smith-Corona serial number prefix quick-reference list into HTML and made a page for it.

Lastly, I’ve added or updated photos for several machines. Either the existing photos were too crappy, or a typewriter never got added at all because it needed to be cleaned or I just plain forgot.

Here’s the new stuff:

Remington Portable #1

Monarch

Monarch Pioneer

Royal #10 with 14″ carriage

Royal HH

Royal Empress

Underwood De Luxe Quiet Tab

Penncrest Caravelle 10

Tower Chieftain

Adler J4

Caligraph No.2

Caligraph No.4

Today’s Toronto Globe and Mail has an article about typewriter collecting. You may recognize a few names in it *coughcough*.

The focus of the piece is on Martin Howard, who is displaying a portion of his exquisite collection of pre-1900s typewriters at the Toronto airport. Fellow NaNoWriMo Typewriter Brigader John Payton is featured as well.

I think the article highlights an important distinction among collectors of vintage and antique typewriters. Martin Howard is one of the heavy-hitters in our field. He collects only the finest and rarest specimens and has an extremely narrow focus of the 20-year period of early typewriter development at the end of the 1800s. His museum-quality pieces literally get the white-glove treatment.

In contrast, the article describes how my toddler likes to whack the keys. My favorite machine is not a Williams or a Jewett or a Desnmore, but a dirt-common Corona. And although we discussed it over the phone, the article does not mention how I use my typewriters for typecasting, and only briefly describes Mr Payton writing with his own machines. A toddler should be allowed nowhere near Mr Howard’s collection.

In short, I tend not to collect machines that I am afraid to use. I will leave the ultra-rare, ultra-expensive typewriters to the Martin Howards of the world. As nice as it would look to be able to display my machines behind illuminated glass, they would also seem a bit isolated and sad. (I like Herman Price’s display: nicely arranged, yet accessable.)

One of the reasons that I started Machines of Loving Grace was to bring inclusion to the amateur collector, those of us who don’t seek out just the rare machines but who appreciate displaying–and yes, using–the common typewriters that many Serious Collectors will not give a second glance. We may not know the detailed history of our machines, but we know that we like how the keys feel beneath our fingers. We are the bulls in the typewriter shop, who love nothing more than to lay hands upon, disassemble, and tinker with typers. Got rust? Who cares, so long as it works? Chipped paint? Adds character.

This isn’t to say that I won’t pass up a good deal on a rare machine when it comes along. I have a pair of Caligraphs that will probably never be used, but they were free and I’d have been insane to refuse them. And I have a fairly good investment piece in the Keaton, though I can’t read the music it types. But when I’m at the writing desk? Gimme that Underwood.

Renga Arts was featured in a “Small Business Success” segment on CNN this weekend as “trash to treasures” recyclers. Disappointingly, one of the first items shown was…typewriter key jewelry. This is the letter I wrote them in response. Click the letter for a larger version if it’s too hard to read.

Incidentally, this was typed on a 1941 Olivetti Studio 42 .

I needed a small calendar for here at work, and I just couldn’t find one that I liked at B&N or the kiosk a the mall. So I decided to make my own, with typewriters in mind, of course. And once that was done, I thought I’d share it with y’all in case you, too, would like some nifty writing machines to look at while you’re trying to remember whether it’s Thursday or only Tuesday. Click the image to download the .pdf.

It’s not fancy. Just a series of 8.5″x11″ sheets that you can staple together. I included Jan, 2010, because if you’re like me you wait until after the new year so you don’t have to pay full price.

(I want folks to know that you can always purchase a high-quality typewriter-themed calendar from either The Classic Typewriter Page Store or Portable Typewriter Forum Store. I don’t want to step on anyone’s legitimate money-making turf.)

Maybe next year I’ll do vintage cameras.