One of the more odd items I have found on ebay. This is for a letter press, which would ink these blocks, then push a piece of paper into them. To be clear, these are individual blocks and it is unlikely that they were ever printed together like this.
I bought them just as an interesting item to add to my collection of…..other interesting items. They were cheap and they are very small (maybe 1/2″ square).
But after owning them for a couple years, I decided to see if I could print with them. So I got some black printing ink and a rubber brayer (roller for applying the ink). I do not have a press of course, so I tried a couple methods including pushing the paper into them, and eventually I even tried stepping on the paper with my foot and full body weight! I used a stack of paper to help give it some compression to equalize the pressure.
As you can see my results were imperfect but in an endearing way! After printing, I scanned the results. The image above is from combining a couple attempts. The new header/home button on this website is an edited version (I added yellow tint and grey background to match the site).
Here is a scan of the actual blocks, when I laid them into the scanner. This was an interesting and fun experiment and it always feels good to take something very old and not just have it, but also to use it!
