Triumph – the TYPEWRITER Factory

January 2017: 1962 Triumph Matura Super

When considering adjectives that best describe the Triumph Matura Super, super is a good place to start. Actually, triumph works well too, and that’s because it is both a design triumph and simply super to use.

The Olympia SG1 might be the go-to benchmark for exceptional standard-size performance, and when compared to it the Matura holds its own. In terms of type action and ease of use it runs a close second to the Olympia, and arguably surpasses it when scrutinizing its overall design. The typewriter’s organically shaped case flows nicely over its mechanical innards and is pleasing to look at, more so when you ignore the 50 cm interchangeable carriage fitted to this particular example that admittedly, like all wider carriages, makes it appear top heavy.

There’s nothing like pulling out a favorite big gun to start off the New Year with a bang. And there are few standards better suited to typing out long, pesky lists of New Year’s resolutions, even if they might include that annual promise to stop buying typewriters.

Not postage stamps, but stamps none-the-less, these colourful little oddities are but a few of their kind that are found when such paraphernalia happens to be on your radar. Decorative stamps with zero postage value are curious little things: you lick ’em and stick ’em, and off they go on whatever you’ve affixed them to.

Presumably, the majority of such stamps would have found their way onto envelopes, but were they promotional items produced by each respective manufacturer to embellish their correspondence with, or were they sold by a third party to typewriter retailers or perhaps even enthusiasts? Looking at them now, I also have to question if they were period pieces that reflected contemporary models, or commemorative products that were made decades after the fact.

About the only thing that I do know is they’re fun to look at, and I’m sure for some aficionados also fun to collect. They are in themselves little works of typewriter art, but that doesn’t mean I would go so far as to stick them on the living room walls.

A Stamp of Approval

Tag: Triumph

TYPEWRITER of the MONTH

January 2017: 1962 Triumph Matura Super

Picture Perfect [3]