ANTIQUE PRINTERS PLATE DRAWERS

MY FATHER'S OLD FISHING LURES AND TACK

Old antique printing plate drawers are a collectors dream.  Not as a collection by themselves but for all the little things in life we have collected.  When I found my first printing plate drawer, it must have sat unused for a years.  It was content to just be sitting on display all by itself.  But then, while out and about I ran across another printer plate drawer and it had been filled with miniatures; postage stamps, silverware, milk bottles, farm animals, anything that was in the real world that could be made little. The tiny squares that lined the drawers where metal lettering plates once stored by newspapers were now used for peoples little treasures.

This one I made for my granddaughter.  I added the outrageous frame and let her imagination do the rest.

   Upon looking through junk drawers, old pieces of jewelry, treasured boxes full of childhood mementos and other tiny little what-knots I unearthed a goldmine of things to show off in the small squares lining the printer plates’ drawer.

From 50 year old marbles, to drill team bars from old uniforms I once wore; or a set of brass wax letter stamps to a miniature set of camp stove cooking pots and pans; foreign coins and cash, and barrettes worn in my hair when I was a little girl. When I was finished uncovering all the keepsakes I had plenty left over to embellish a second display.

LIFE'S LITTLE MEMENTOS

It would be many years before a printer plate drawer came my way at a rummage sale alongside the back roads in Idaho. This one still had the old handle used to pull the drawer in and out.  It would be quite a few years before I filled this with keepsakes that I treasured. Only this time I chose something completely different from my childhood mementos.  My Father had recently given his entire fishing gear to our son (knowing his days of fishing were behind him) to enjoy.  As I sorted through the old rusty metal tackle box I came across something more than just a bunch of old finger pricking fishing lures. It was a walk down memory lane to all the wading in streams and rivers I’d once pleasured with my Father.  These were the treasures that will fill the empty squares of the second printer plate drawer that had long since been forgotten in the attic.  I dusted it off and carefully began placing the fishing lures in just their perfect spots, all the while reminiscing of fishing tales once told. 

HIS NAME "JIM" IS IN THE UPPER LEFT -  SPELLED OUT BY USING FISHING HOOKS

 Now I can enjoy not only tiny mementos from a childhood but also all the journeys of simple fishing trips with our family.  It all tells a story, but only I know them well enough to gaze at the display and lapse into a dream of fishing days gone by. I wonder which fishing lure caught that big one hanging on the wall above the printers’ plate. Now there’s a story needing to be told.