Letterpress Freak's Jump Page

Browse through our Collection Index or look at individual items to appreciate what this Museum has achieved in saving machines from a terrible fate.

Dozens of typecasting machines and dozens of typesetting machines.

Look at our founts index to jump to our thousands of founts of handset type: thousands of founts of Linotype and Ludlow mats and thousands of founts of Typecasting (mainly Monotype) mats.

There are also dozens of printing presses to look at but as with many items in our collection, lots of them still require work before being readily accessible.

Artefacts are one of our strengths: these include blocks [cuts], stereos, made up type pages, galley proofs, and hand tools, to mention a few. [We won't mention the ones that relate to `non-true' printing.]

Books, posters, broadsheets, or miniatures may be printed in any quantity.

Training is provided for the task in hand.

Roots of Printing Workshop

This full-day Professional Workshop is primarily for those who are working with typography but have never seen or handled the real thing. Roots of Printing shows them the origins of their craft and its many arcane terms.

Among those involved with DTP systems (and even Word Processing), many become quite enthusiastic about typefaces and design. They come away with a better understanding of what's going on inside their computer.

Roots of Printing gives a close-up on various hand and machine typesetting processes used over the years, typefounding, page layout and lockup, and the printing press. Practical work includes hand and machine typesetting and printing a souvenir page.

This is a two-week full-time exposure to traditional printing technology. A total of 70 contact hours including verbal presentations, demonstrations, and plenty of practical typesetting and printing. The work is assessed for grant of the Certificate.

The maximum class size is THREE, ensuring many hours of close attention.

You can see books typeset and printed by various processes, designed with varying styles (e.g. running heads, chapter commencements, margins, typeface), printed or published by various firms, and in varying states of preservation (or otherwise).

Access to the Library is by arrangement.

Our Volunteer Program will train you and make use of your talents to look after parts of our collection, help explain about printing and assist us to present our message.