Letterpress Cuts

Before we met Larry was stationed in Germany for four years. He would spend his time off driving around Europe visiting the antique shops and restaurants of small villages. One of the things he hauled back from that tour was a collection of antique copper letterpress cuts.


He bought them from an old man who sold antiques out of his kitchen near Giessen. Originally there were about 1500 cuts but we recently sold about 500 of them through ebay in order to pay for a new septic and wood stove (before deciding to keep the remainder of the collection). Most of our customers were book artists, but we also sold to jewelers, leather workers, collectors, printers, and potters.




The cuts were manufactured by the Joseph H. Kreuter Company of Giessen, Germany between 1903-1953.





Before I began listing them I was able to find Kreuter’s 25th and 50th anniversary catalogs from a bookseller in Germany (for $300!!!) which helped to authenticate the designs and narrow down which pieces were 100 years old and which were just 50. Unfortunately neither of us can read German so I don’t know a whole lot about Mr Kreuter.

A woman from Berlin did contact me after seeing my listings and said that she grew up in Giessen and knew the Kreuter family. According to her the grandchildren eventually ran the business into the ground before her mother purchased their building from them. Michaela was selling the brass dies that the cuts were manufactured from on the German Ebay until a man from Poland bought her out.

This is a postcard that she gave me with a picture of her son Lennart on it.

Other than that, we are the only resource for these cuts that I know of. I’m not sure what application this has in the digital age but I keep thinking that the catalog images would make for some cool clip art. I did email a Kreuter family from Giessen to get permission to make a free website of the designs and never heard back. But for all I know Kreuter could be as common a German surname as Smith is here. Anyways, I spent this morning filling some shelves I found at a yard sale yesterday with the cuts so I thought I would post about them.

I think we have about 1000 left and I’m always toying with how I might use them creatively.......haven’t hit on anything I’m really excited about yet but they’re kind of cool and I am really happy that their boxes aren’t under my desk anymore!