by Christopher Hodapp
Hard to believe, but Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply is entering its 175th anniversary of serving the Craft. That's pretty amazing for any company, but especially one that has such a narrow niche of customers. To celebrate, their first project is a reprint of a Masonic classic: the 175th Anniversary Edition of (Robert) Macoy's Masonic Monitor.
This edition has been thoroughly edited and formatted by Kansas Past Grand Master and author Michael Halleran, and its more than 300 illustrations have been painstakingly cleaned up. The hardback covers are being individually gold stamped in-house at Macoy using the same hand-carved wooden dies that were created for the original 1867 edition.
The company has literally hundreds of these illustration dies created for their oldest books that were painstakingly carved by craftsmen in the 1800s using the tiniest of precision carving blades and magnifying glasses at a time long before the introduction of electricity. Macoy's also refurbished a mid-1800s letter press in order to print limited edition bookmark cards for this special book, using its own custom-carved wooden die.
In the video above, Macoy owner Steve McCall explains the difference between a Masonic monitor versus a ritual, and a brief history of the development of monitors that led to Robert Macoy's version in the 1850s. And if you've never known how a hardback book gets manufactured with a complex, artistic gold-stamped cover, Steve explains it.
To order, CLICK HERE.
Continue reading...