Melbourne Museum of Printing

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The MMOP website was up and running in September 1996 and had a banner of thumbnail pix on the home page. These remained over many updates until January 2013. They are part of MMOP's own Heritage, so we could not dump them - they must be conserved and available for inspection.

These pictures were taken as video on a Sony Handicam, and digitised to stills on some special equipment at Victoria University, Footscray Park. They were then edited in Photoshop at the Footscray Community Arts Centre.

So here they are, reflecting as they do the basics of MMOP in the 1990's and today: presses, types, matrices, typesetting machinery and people having a good time printing their work.

Larger Versions of the Pictures

These 1996 comments have been left unchanged

Our Albion Press
This press was rescued from the dirt under a house: we expect to be able to print on it soon. Meantime we have several other presses in use, and about 40 presses total.

STOP PRESS NEWS!
As of early 2005, this press is now in use and visiting artists have produced many unique posters and broadsheets. Would you like to have a go?

A Linotype
One of our 40 or so linecasters: a model 14, made in New York in the 1920's. Still working fairly well.

Monotype Supercaster Matrix
Three mats from Garamond Alternate Italic, 72 point.

A box of 85 or so of these make a fount of matrices. We have about a thousand such boxes. And that's just for the Supercaster system: there are more again for the Monotype Compo Caster, Thompson Typecaster, Linotype / Intertype and Ludlow.

Ludlow Matrices
A line, in a composing stick, of Record Gothic Medium Condensed, 24 point.

A fount of mats for the Ludlow carries several of each letter, totalling between 200 and 800 pieces. The Museum carries just under one thousand founts.

Handset Types
A few letters in Times Roman, 8 point, made on the Monotype system.

The craftsmanship that went into designing the punches and matrices for typecasting is evident in this close up.

For an even closer shot of a type, look in our Industry Index. (That shot may not be on-line yet.)

Making a Print
A great pleasure to the Museum people is seeing young artists make use of our presses and types to express their ideas. Letterpress provides a simple and inexpensive way to add a message to any kind of image.

These visitors were making the last of three passes on a series of posters to publicise their artists' festival. The posters are already in demand as collectors' items.

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