EARL HAYS PRESS
The latest acquisition by the International Printing Museum, Carson, is a rare collection of antique printer’s type and printing blocks from the Earl Hays Press, the oldest printing shop in Los Angeles and the leading producer of “fakes” and “inserts” for the Hollywood film and television industry for 100 years.
The Earl Hays Press type book used to find the perfect font for period films.
Earl Hays Press, located in Sunland, CA (near Hollywood) was first established in 1913 and has made everything from the old newspapers seen in every Western movie or in The Godfather films, to Astronaut Jack Nicolson on a fake Time Magazine cover, even the printing plates used to make the police decals on Beverly Hills 90210; all of these are the creative work of the iconic Hollywood printing shop known as Earl Hays Press. Over the years, the Printing Museum has collaborated with Earl Hays Press, with the Museum renting the actual working antique presses needed as props in the films while EHP created the inserts.
The walls of Earl Hays Press are covered in memorabilia from over a century of printing for film
The Earl Hays Type Collection comprises nearly 1,000 fonts of metal and wood type dating from the mid19th century to the mid-20th century. “This is probably the last known collection of type of this rarity and historical significance still in the same working printing shop for one hundred years!” commented Mark Barbour, curator of the Printing Museum. “And for the collection to have this connection to our entertainment culture makes the acquisition all the more important and noteworthy.
