Doña Ignacia
As promised on my previous posts, today is Doña Ignacia's turm. She is my 100 years old foil stamper. I was very lucky to find a piece of history like this one so fast and locally.
Doña Ignacia is a Brandtjen and Kluge 12" X 18" foil stamping press with 3 draw foil attachments (yes, you can print with 3 different foils at the same time...), double fly wheel, and two temperature control panels. And she is huge!
Even though I have at least two years of experience working on another Kluge, I had to learn everything all over again with this one. She's very sensitive to temperature and has a lot of old tricks which I had to discover little by little. The slowest speed is very fast for me, so in a sense I become part of the machine as I manually operate her.
And what about the name? Doña Ignacia was the nom de guerre of an Independence Venezuelan Heroine. Her real name was Josefa Camejo. I picked Doña Ignacia instead of Doña Josefa, as all my other printing presses have fictional names with Venezuelan history. And also, because my eldest son and his ascendents, for generations, have shared the name "Ignacio."
Doña Josefa Camejo, aka "Doña Ignacia", participated on several insurrections with a group of women who were not afraid of war. She fought for the independence of certain regions in Venezuela with success. One of her quotes reads:
“Females, Sir Governor, are not afraid of the horrors of war. Even a cannon explosion will only push forward our desire for liberty and freedom, which we will sustain over all things as a present to our fatherland… "
