When Ebay and Gumtree were still tiny kernels of ideas in the minds of their founders jumble sales were great places to find all kinds of old stuff. Shoot forward twenty years and I went along to a local jumble sale intrigued to see what would be on offer. Amongst lots of video cassettes, foot spas, radios, microwaves and glassware though not many clothes was this...
A typewriter, an Olivetti Dora to be precise.
Is it working? I asked.
Dunno you'll have to take a chance mate, came the reply so for £3.50 I took it home.
Now I used to have a typewriter many many years ago but has long since disappeared. I took it out of it's blue case and after winding the ribbon on a bit I started typing. It all worked beautifully, after typing on a computer keyboard it feels a bit strange - you become really conscious of not making any mistakes both spelling and layout but I absolutely love using it! I should really have written this post with it but I'm in our studio and it's at home but I will add that this model was designed by Ettore Sottsass who designed the famous Olivetti Valentine from which this model the Dora is based. I'll upload some typewriting examples soon...