This typewriter reminds me of one very important fact in life: You should never be afraid to ask a question. When I first spotted this machine on Gumtree here in Australia, the seller was asking a whopping $25,000 for it. The price was so absurd that I snapped a photo from the Gumtree site and…
No, you haven’t misread the nameplate. It isn’t missing any characters or been badly labeled when a label may have been re-applied. This is a Remington J – which is known in the USA as the Remington Junior. Why? Well, we’ll get to that in a moment. My collecting has taken a bit of an…
Some time in the next week this typewriter will be taken down to a post office and sent on its merry way up to Queensland. There, it will join up with many other interesting typewriters that are housed in John Lavery’s collection and at least get some appreciation. I promised John that I would send…
My relationship with Shenzhen dates back a decade or so. I first visited here in the early 2000s which was back before the Chinese Olympics. Back then it was a city that was exploding almost out of control of the government, and was a pretty wild place. For those who are unfamiliar with Shenzhen, it is…
It is hard not to be curious about the demountable typewriter. These beasts of the early 20th century is an excellent example of the ambition and ingenuity that the early typewriter designers had during this era. However for all its advances, the Demountable typewriter company would be no more by the end of the great…
I’ve been eager to write Kowloon Walled City for a while. It was one of the main reasons I wanted to re-visit Hong Kong, The book can be acquired directly from the…
Here I was, thousands of kilometres from home and standing in a darkened street digging through piles of trash in the back of Hong Kong looking for typewriters. It felt surreal. We arrived at Temple street market late in the evening after spending the day doing some shopping on the main island. This market is…
For reasons that are about to be obvious, my blogging activity will be curtailed for a while. But, I will be writing on! And now now a little video that I originally made for the facebook typewriter group. Hence the reference to photos being posted previously.
A tram travels along Hennessy Road on the main (Hong Kong) island late in the afternoon. ….somewhere in an office tower. And yes, there will be typewriters. But stay tuned, as I have some truly fascinating corners of this part of the world to tell you about.
The Filthy Platen 