...we go to the Hershey car show every year...
it's the largest antique in the world and a sort of "Woddstock" forold car enthusiasts...you cannot possibly see it all...it's so big and overwhelming, but there's wonderful things to see and folks to meet around every corner....
Here's part of the crew that made the jaunt this year....
It's just one among many of our oddball family traditions... We stand around in parking lots for days (we used to stand around in muddy fields before they were paved for HersheyPark), walking mile upon mile of flea market rows past mound of rusty fenders, and piles of unidentifiable chrome bits...
We eat chocolate, we tailgate picnic...it varies who can be there, but it's always some of the Graneys (Walsh, LaRocco and Mihalick) and the Magees...
And we love it.
This year, my Dad's letterpress photoengravings caught the eye of reporter Daniel Strohl...many thanks to him for help celebrating my Dad's art, The Obsolete Fleet...and our family's love of the Hershey swap meet...
Here's Dan's story and an image...
I love how Dan wrote this up and I thank him for it.
Thanks too to all who visit us at the edge of the Orange Field on the way into the Car Show...we love seeing you year after year...and to all who stop to chat with Rory about his Grandpa's creations...a big thanks...he loves to tell the story...and my Dad loves to hear him tell it...
xxoo Jen
PS...one of the fave vehicles this year...not the most practical these days for hauling, but love those red wheels!
A
thousandth of an inch at a time, using a bit that spun at 33,000 RPM,
Jim Graney etched his line cuts. Thousands of them, all of different
designs, all in reverse, committed to zinc and copper plates no more
than a few inches square and backed with a few layers of thin wood. And
of the countless engravings he produced in a 50-year career, maybe a few
hundred remain, all displayed on a table at the edge of the recent AACA
Hershey swap meet.
His work appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, and in many other publications, including Hemmings Motor News.
All of it went uncredited, however. Graney, who grew up in Brooklyn and
now lives in Warwick, New York, never really considered himself an
artist, just a laborer who took on a photo engraving job in 1946, when
he was 15. “I just needed an afterschool job,” Graney said. “I worked
for a mail order shop to begin with and did a lot of thumbnail prints
that people could order from a catalog for their business cards or
whatever. There were slews of Model A’s and other old cars in there, and
so, every time we got an order for an old car, I made two and set one
aside.”
He would eventually take on commercial photo engraving as well and go
on to work for Sterling, at the time the biggest photo engraving shop
in New York City. And he became known among his colleagues as the guy
who wanted duplicates of all the automotive photo engravings that came
through the shop. “Everybody knew to make another one for Graney,” he
said.
The line cuts that came about, largely genericized depictions of
popular cars, tended to illustrate classified ads when classified
editors didn’t have a photo of a particular car for sale, but still
needed an illustration that was close enough to it. “They were ersatz
when it was okay not to be specific,” said Graney’s daughter, Jen Graney
O’Connor, who said she grew up learning to identify collectible cars
through her father’s line cuts. “He just happened to get the job and
stayed with it for 50 years. He loved the art and loved printing and
gadgets.”
His love for gadgets also led him to a love for older automobiles,
and that in turn led him to start Obsolete Fleet, a company that
specialized in renting out older cars to film productions in New York
City. If he didn’t own the vehicle himself, he’d consult the member list
of the Greater New York region of the AACA, for which he served as
treasurer, to see if a fellow club member had a car that would work. And
he’d often pull out his automotive lithographs to help movie producers
narrow down what sort of vehicles they wanted to cast. Through Obsolete
Fleet, he provided cars to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies, among many other
- See more at:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/10/22/rubber-stamps-not-quite-the-automotive-art-of-the-last-letterpress-engraver-in-new-york-city/#sthash.Y14rStxi.dpuf
A
thousandth of an inch at a time, using a bit that spun at 33,000 RPM,
Jim Graney etched his line cuts. Thousands of them, all of different
designs, all in reverse, committed to zinc and copper plates no more
than a few inches square and backed with a few layers of thin wood. And
of the countless engravings he produced in a 50-year career, maybe a few
hundred remain, all displayed on a table at the edge of the recent AACA
Hershey swap meet.
His work appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, and in many other publications, including Hemmings Motor News.
All of it went uncredited, however. Graney, who grew up in Brooklyn and
now lives in Warwick, New York, never really considered himself an
artist, just a laborer who took on a photo engraving job in 1946, when
he was 15. “I just needed an afterschool job,” Graney said. “I worked
for a mail order shop to begin with and did a lot of thumbnail prints
that people could order from a catalog for their business cards or
whatever. There were slews of Model A’s and other old cars in there, and
so, every time we got an order for an old car, I made two and set one
aside.”
He would eventually take on commercial photo engraving as well and go
on to work for Sterling, at the time the biggest photo engraving shop
in New York City. And he became known among his colleagues as the guy
who wanted duplicates of all the automotive photo engravings that came
through the shop. “Everybody knew to make another one for Graney,” he
said.
The line cuts that came about, largely genericized depictions of
popular cars, tended to illustrate classified ads when classified
editors didn’t have a photo of a particular car for sale, but still
needed an illustration that was close enough to it. “They were ersatz
when it was okay not to be specific,” said Graney’s daughter, Jen Graney
O’Connor, who said she grew up learning to identify collectible cars
through her father’s line cuts. “He just happened to get the job and
stayed with it for 50 years. He loved the art and loved printing and
gadgets.”
His love for gadgets also led him to a love for older automobiles,
and that in turn led him to start Obsolete Fleet, a company that
specialized in renting out older cars to film productions in New York
City. If he didn’t own the vehicle himself, he’d consult the member list
of the Greater New York region of the AACA, for which he served as
treasurer, to see if a fellow club member had a car that would work. And
he’d often pull out his automotive lithographs to help movie producers
narrow down what sort of vehicles they wanted to cast. Through Obsolete
Fleet, he provided cars to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies, among many others.
- See more at:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/10/22/rubber-stamps-not-quite-the-automotive-art-of-the-last-letterpress-engraver-in-new-york-city/#sthash.Y14rStxi.dpuf
A
thousandth of an inch at a time, using a bit that spun at 33,000 RPM,
Jim Graney etched his line cuts. Thousands of them, all of different
designs, all in reverse, committed to zinc and copper plates no more
than a few inches square and backed with a few layers of thin wood. And
of the countless engravings he produced in a 50-year career, maybe a few
hundred remain, all displayed on a table at the edge of the recent AACA
Hershey swap meet.
His work appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, and in many other publications, including Hemmings Motor News.
All of it went uncredited, however. Graney, who grew up in Brooklyn and
now lives in Warwick, New York, never really considered himself an
artist, just a laborer who took on a photo engraving job in 1946, when
he was 15. “I just needed an afterschool job,” Graney said. “I worked
for a mail order shop to begin with and did a lot of thumbnail prints
that people could order from a catalog for their business cards or
whatever. There were slews of Model A’s and other old cars in there, and
so, every time we got an order for an old car, I made two and set one
aside.”
He would eventually take on commercial photo engraving as well and go
on to work for Sterling, at the time the biggest photo engraving shop
in New York City. And he became known among his colleagues as the guy
who wanted duplicates of all the automotive photo engravings that came
through the shop. “Everybody knew to make another one for Graney,” he
said.
The line cuts that came about, largely genericized depictions of
popular cars, tended to illustrate classified ads when classified
editors didn’t have a photo of a particular car for sale, but still
needed an illustration that was close enough to it. “They were ersatz
when it was okay not to be specific,” said Graney’s daughter, Jen Graney
O’Connor, who said she grew up learning to identify collectible cars
through her father’s line cuts. “He just happened to get the job and
stayed with it for 50 years. He loved the art and loved printing and
gadgets.”
His love for gadgets also led him to a love for older automobiles,
and that in turn led him to start Obsolete Fleet, a company that
specialized in renting out older cars to film productions in New York
City. If he didn’t own the vehicle himself, he’d consult the member list
of the Greater New York region of the AACA, for which he served as
treasurer, to see if a fellow club member had a car that would work. And
he’d often pull out his automotive lithographs to help movie producers
narrow down what sort of vehicles they wanted to cast. Through Obsolete
Fleet, he provided cars to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies, among many others.
- See more at:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/10/22/rubber-stamps-not-quite-the-automotive-art-of-the-last-letterpress-engraver-in-new-york-city/#sthash.Y14rStxi.dpuf
A
thousandth of an inch at a time, using a bit that spun at 33,000 RPM,
Jim Graney etched his line cuts. Thousands of them, all of different
designs, all in reverse, committed to zinc and copper plates no more
than a few inches square and backed with a few layers of thin wood. And
of the countless engravings he produced in a 50-year career, maybe a few
hundred remain, all displayed on a table at the edge of the recent AACA
Hershey swap meet.
His work appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, and in many other publications, including Hemmings Motor News.
All of it went uncredited, however. Graney, who grew up in Brooklyn and
now lives in Warwick, New York, never really considered himself an
artist, just a laborer who took on a photo engraving job in 1946, when
he was 15. “I just needed an afterschool job,” Graney said. “I worked
for a mail order shop to begin with and did a lot of thumbnail prints
that people could order from a catalog for their business cards or
whatever. There were slews of Model A’s and other old cars in there, and
so, every time we got an order for an old car, I made two and set one
aside.”
He would eventually take on commercial photo engraving as well and go
on to work for Sterling, at the time the biggest photo engraving shop
in New York City. And he became known among his colleagues as the guy
who wanted duplicates of all the automotive photo engravings that came
through the shop. “Everybody knew to make another one for Graney,” he
said.
The line cuts that came about, largely genericized depictions of
popular cars, tended to illustrate classified ads when classified
editors didn’t have a photo of a particular car for sale, but still
needed an illustration that was close enough to it. “They were ersatz
when it was okay not to be specific,” said Graney’s daughter, Jen Graney
O’Connor, who said she grew up learning to identify collectible cars
through her father’s line cuts. “He just happened to get the job and
stayed with it for 50 years. He loved the art and loved printing and
gadgets.”
His love for gadgets also led him to a love for older automobiles,
and that in turn led him to start Obsolete Fleet, a company that
specialized in renting out older cars to film productions in New York
City. If he didn’t own the vehicle himself, he’d consult the member list
of the Greater New York region of the AACA, for which he served as
treasurer, to see if a fellow club member had a car that would work. And
he’d often pull out his automotive lithographs to help movie producers
narrow down what sort of vehicles they wanted to cast. Through Obsolete
Fleet, he provided cars to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies, among many others.
- See more at:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/10/22/rubber-stamps-not-quite-the-automotive-art-of-the-last-letterpress-engraver-in-new-york-city/#sthash.Y14rStxi.dpuf
So many days to savor and be grateful for... 
