This was such a fortuitous find that I was on a typewriter high for the rest of the week (you know how it is!). If I had not been sitting in the front office that day, if I had not taken a break to watch the workers, if our office had not been located on the ground floor... this beauty would have been on her way to the dump. Makes one wonder how many others... eh, better not to think about it.
Sometime last year, my mother-in-law drew us this card to commemorate the start of our typewriter obsession. (The cheerful cow is a recurring character on her cards, and she is depicted in a different activity depending on the time of year/ occasion.) At the time, she claimed the typewriter in the drawing was a Valentine, but we think the Everest is a much closer match!
For a typewriter that was so callously abandoned, this Everest K2 is in surprisingly good condition. The lipstick-red color has held up fairly well over the years, although there are a couple of rough spots that could use a touch up of paint, but I shall leave that up to Georg's discretion.
I have been trying to make up a back story: French expatriate (explains the azerty keyboard) settles in Geneva, purchases typewriter with familiar layout (the dealer label on the case has a Geneva address), uses it for a few decades, and upon retiring to a country manor in Provence, clears out his apartment, and leaves this behind. Such is life. I haven't seen other Everest K2s in this hue and I am pleasantly surprised that they came in other colors other than drab and blah.
A shot of the inner workings - note the carriage drawstring, as thick as a shoelace! Each ribbon is enclosed in a very elegant red platter -makes even plastic spools look pretty nice.
The typeface is a crisp elite, as shown in the typecast. The keyboard has a couple of interesting characters: a degree symbol, and an "ie" character which I think might have been the French equivalent of "th", as in "5th". These days it is standard to write "5eme" as in "cinquieme", so I am not quite sure my theory holds up.
The case that clued me in - I just knew it had to be a typewriter! It's a bit like the SM-3 case, but instead of wood, it's made entirely of metal and finished in an appealing gray hammertone.
I fear our little trash corner may have yielded its first and only typewriter, but now I take a peek every time I walk by so I won't miss anything! One never knows.
