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The Basel Paper Mill
BASEL
www.papiermuseum.ch
The Basel Paper Mill in Switzerland
(Basler Papiermühle) is a working
museum that brings together under one
roof the arts of typography and print-
ing and the manufacture of handmade
paper. Original machinery dating from
as far back as the Middle Ages demon-
strates techniques to visitors, and the
museum conducts a program of courses
about typesetting, printing, and decora-
tive paper manufacture. Central to the
museum’s inventory are the Swiss Histor-
ical Paper Collection and the collection
of equipment and artifacts accumulated
during the -year existence of the
Haas Type Foundry of Munchenstein.
The Gutenberg Museum
MAINZ, GERMANY
www.gutenberg-museum.de
The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz,
Germany, is one of the world’s oldest
museums of print. It was founded by a
group of citizens in , years after
Gutenberg’s birth, to honor the inven-
tor of movable type and showcase to a
wider audience his technical and artistic
achievements. Donations from various
publishers and manufacturers of printing
machines formed the original collection,
which was part of the city library and
included books dating back to the time of
Gutenberg himself.
The museum possesses two of the
Gutenberg Bible, the rarest and most
valuable of books. The collection has now
expanded to include sections about print-
ing techniques, book art, graphics and
posters, paper, and the history of writing.
There is also a reconstruction of Guten-
berg’s workshop where type founding,
typesetting, and printing can be demon-
strated. Finally, the museum operates an
educational unit called the Print Shop.
Hamilton Wood
Type Museum
TWO RIVERS, WISCONSIN
www.woodtype.org
This museum is dedicated to the preser-
vation, study, production, and printing
of wood type, and it is operated by vol-
unteers. The collection of this museum,
located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, con-
tains more than . million pieces of
wood type in more than , diff er-
ent styles and sizes, arguably the largest
collection of its kind in the world.
Hamilton started producing type
in and grew to become the main
provider of wooden type in the United
States until newer technologies forced
its closure. The museum functions as an
educational venue with regular monthly
workshops, and it exhibits antique
printing technologies that include the
production of hot metal type and hand-
operated printing alongside numerous
tools of the trade and rare type-specimen
catalogues. Local people who worked at
Hamilton when it still operated play a
large part in the workshops, passing on
their skills to new generations of typogra-
phers. The museum is the subject of the
new fi lm Typeface ().
RESOURCES
Type-Specifi c Institutions
and Collections
Thanks to the dedication of enthusiastic curators and the generosity of numerous supporters,
museums throughout Europe and the United States allow today’s typographers a glimpse of the way
the craft used to be done and the close link between typography and printing. The websites of each of
the museums and institutions in this chapter include details of opening times and locations.
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Klingspor Museum,
Off enbach
GERMANY
www.klingspor-museum.de
During the post–World War II years, a
small institution dedicated to the art of
modern book production and typogra-
phy was established in the German city of
Off enbach am Main. The private collec-
tion of Karl Klingspor formed the basis of
the museum. Klingspor, together with his
brother, Wilhelm, operated the Klingspor
type foundry in the city in the fi rst half of
the twentieth century ().
The museum opened to the public in
November . On Klingspor’s death in
, his heirs donated the contents of
his extensive library of more than ,
printed works, which includes rare exam-
ples of calligraphy, book illustration,
book binding, and other fi ne examples of
print and typography from the late s
and early s. The museums website
is also a useful source of historical typo-
graphic information, listing more than
, type designers and the typefaces
each has created.
The Bodoni Museum
PARMA, ITALY
www.museobodoni.beniculturali.it
The Bodoni Museum (Museo Bodoniano),
the oldest established museum of print-
ing in Italy, is located in the city of Parma.
It opened its doors in , coinciding
with the th anniversary of the death
of Giambattista Bodoni (), the famous
Italian engraver, publisher, printer,
typographer, and designer of the Bodoni
() family of typefaces. Bodoni lived
and worked in Parma for an extended
period of his life, and he died there in
. The museum was established to pre-
serve the equipment and memorabilia
saved from Bodoni’s own workshop, and
it promotes the study of graphic design
and typography through its education
program. The permanent collection
includes more than , books printed
by Bodoni, a unique set of punches, dies,
and tools that belonged to him, and many
miscellaneous printing tests and items of
correspondence.
Museum Meermanno
THE HAGUE
www.meermanno.nl
Housed in the former residence of
Baron van Westreenen of Tiellandt
(–), the museum focuses on its
unique collection of written and printed
books. The collection is extensive, cov-
ering everything from hand-written
medieval manuscripts to relatively
modern nineteenth-century examples
of book printing and binding. The col-
lection also include examples of the
oldest form of printed book, known
in Latin as incunabula, which were
printed using complete blocks of hand-
carved text for each separate page.
The Bodoni Museum,
housed within the premises
of the Palatine Library.
The bust is of Giambat-
tista Bodoni himself.
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The Museum
of Printing
NORTH ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS
www.museumofprinting.org
This establishment is dedicated to pre-
serving the history of graphic arts and
printing, which inevitably involve a great
deal of typography. The museum holds
in collection hundreds of antique print-
ing, typesetting, and bindery machines,
alongside an extensive library of books
and print-related documents.
The museum was incorporated as a
not-for-profi t organization in to save
for posterity the technologies that the
printing and typesetting industries no
longer use commercially. It also tells the
story of the transition from letterpress
printing through photographic processes
to today’s digital technology, using one of
the world’s largest collections of printing
hardware. A principal exhibit comprises
a timeline history of typography and
typesetting reaching back years and
covering hand-setting, hot metal type-
setting, photo typesetting, and of course,
the digital technology in use today.
Museum of the
Printing Arts
LEIPZIG, GERMANY
www.druckkunst-museum.de
The Museum of the Printing Arts in
Leipzig, Germany, off ers visitors the
chance to experience what it was once
like to work as a printer and typogra-
pher. It combines a working print shop
with the more traditional aspects of a
museum, covering years of print
and type history. Spread over four fl oors,
the collection is composed of more than
fully working machines and presses
demonstrating copperplate printing,
lithography, and letterpress, with a par-
ticular focus on manual and mechanical
typesetting. In addition, there is a fully
working type foundry where lead type is
cast by hand and by machine.
It is estimated that the museum’s
current collection includes approxi-
mately forty tons of lead type, matrices,
and steel dies. If that isn’t enough, it also
has a fully operational bookbindery. The
museum’s motto is “See, smell and touch,”
which is great news for visitors who want
to learn fi rsthand about the “black art”
of printing. The museum holds regular
workshops on a range of historic print-
ing techniques including traditional
typesetting and letterpress printing.
Museum of
Printing History
HOUSTON
www.printingmuseum.org
Four printers who wanted to preserve
and share with the community their own
large collections founded the Museum of
Printing History in . The museum’s
goal, which it shares with many of the
other museums listed in this book, is to
preserve printing technology and skills,
but it also is focused on the advancement
of literacy.
The permanent exhibits narrate the
story of written communication and the
way in which printing and print tech-
nology have transformed our lives, with
many galleries referencing the impor-
tance of the newspaper in this story.
Other featured artifacts from the col-
lection include Asian movable type,
illuminated manuscripts, a Guten-
berg press replica, a copy of Benjamin
Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, an
extensive letterpress and type collection,
and antique bookbinding equipment.
Leipzig’s Museum of the Printing
Arts houses more than fully
working machines and presses.
A set of blackletter type matrices from
the vast collection held at the Museum of
the Printing Arts in Leipzig, Germany
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Museum of Typography
HANIA, CRETE
www.typography-museum.gr
This small museum on the Greek island of Crete is a relatively
new project, made possible through the eff orts of the local
newspaper Haniotika Nea and opened in May 2005. At the time
of this writing, visits happen by appointment only. (Unless you
are a local resident, any visit is likely to be planned in advance
anyway, so this shouldn’t present a problem.) Exhibits include
printing and typesetting equipment dating from the nine-
teenth century (12), rare books dating back to 1570, and items
of local print ephemera including newspapers and banknotes.
Arranged visits include demonstrations of the equipment.
National Print Museum
DUBLIN
www.nationalprintmuseum.ie
The National Print Museum, located in Ireland’s capital city,
aims to improve accessibility to the archival material of, and
foster skills associated with, the Irish printing industry. The
museum opened in 1996 and runs regular workshops that
include both calligraphy and printing, providing a place for
printers, typographers, historians, students, and the general
public to see and hear how printing developed and brought
information, in all its forms, to the world.
The permanent collection includes mechanical typeset-
ting machines manufactured by Linotype (129) and Intertype
and historical hand presses such as the famous Columbian and
Albion. In addition, the museum maintains a rolling program of
temporary exhibitions that showcase material from all over the
world relating to the permanent collection. It also includes a ref-
erence library that visitors can use by appointment.
A “hands on” workshop experience at The
National Print Museum in Dublin, Ireland
Movable type samples from the collection of The
National Print Museum in Dublin, Ireland
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The Museum Plantin-Moretus
ANTWERP, BELGIUM
http://museum.antwerpen.be/plantin_moretus/index_eng.html
The origins of this Belgian museum stretch back to
when Christoff el Plantin fi rst settled in Antwerp. His shrewd
business sense allowed him to build a huge printing oper-
ation, handling practically all offi cially sanctioned print
contracts of the time, including the famous Biblia Poly-
glotta (“Bible in Five Languages”). His successor, son-in-law
Jan I Moretus, took over the company on his death, and
the family continued to run the business until its fi nal col-
lapse in . The fi rm, along with its entire contents, was
sold to the city of Antwerp and in the -year-old
printing fi rm became the Museum Plantin-Moretus.
Of particular interest is the museum’s remarkable
collection of typographic material and equipment, which
includes two of the oldest surviving printing presses in
the world. Plantin traveled widely to acquire fonts for use
by the fi rm, counting Claude Garamond () among his
suppliers. The letters and dies he brought back to Antwerp
still remain in the collection, and the museum possesses
the only complete set of Garamond’s letter dies remaining
today. Another notable exhibit is the fully equipped type
foundry where the Moretuses created their own typefaces.
St Bride Foundation and Library
LONDON
www.stbride.org
St Bride Foundation was established in as a social, edu-
cational, and cultural center, and incorporated as a technical
library and printing school. It eventually grew into what is now
The London College of Communication, one of the foremost
schools of its kind in the world.
With letterpress and the handmade experiencing a revival
among graphic designers and typographers, the skills and
techniques taught at St Bride are in demand once again, and
the Foundation continues to strive to protect and promote the
heritage of typography and printing through workshops, lec-
tures, and conferences. In addition to having , specialist
print, graphic design, and typography books, and , peri-
odicals, the Library is the custodian of an unrivalled collection
of printing artifacts. Type and typography is naturally a high-
light of the collection with punches, matrices, and founders’
type dating from the seventeenth () to the twentieth cen-
turies (). There are also roughly special collections
including, for example, boxes of hand-scribed master let-
terforms for Letraset typefaces, and , woodblocks by Mary
Byfi eld for the Chiswick Press. An ongoing series of workshops
and specialist typographic courses runs alongside other print-
related subjects, with details available through the website.
The Type Museum
LONDON
www.typemuseum.org
At the time of this writing, The Type Museum, which was estab-
lished in , is undergoing a major period of redevelopment
and so is closed to the general public. Limited access may be
possible by appointment so check before planning a visit.
The museum’s primary objective has always been to pre-
serve the skills and methods used to make type, and with the
help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, it has managed
to acquire collections that document the key chapters in Brit-
ain’s history of type: traditional typefounding, woodletter type,
and mechanical typecasting or hot-metal type. The various col-
lections include material dating as far back as the sixteenth
century () such as punches, matrices, and molds from princi-
pal London type foundries, as well as such diverse items as the
complete business records of Monotype ().
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