Friday 6 November 2020

Just your type










Despite being in the digital age there are plenty of designers and others who are fascinated by wood type from the letterpress printing age. When I was at art school years ago a friend and I bought a small second-hand proofing press and lots of lead and wood type faces (he still does printing with the collection) so seeing these cards was a lovely bit of nostalgia for me. 

The Hamilton Company, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, is a printing and type museum and they still cut wood type. A fold-out poster has a brief illustrated history of the museum and on the reverse a visual guide to different typeface styles. Text type was always made from lead but anything that required large letters would have been impossible with lead so wood was the obvious choice, mostly cut from maple.

The cards show various close-ups of wood type and some of the letters are very decorative but unfortunately, there aren't cards showing these faces as complete alphabets, also included are six art cards printed in silver and brown on a light brown cardboard stock. 

The box would interest anyone who wants to see some examples of letterpress wood type from decades ago and the cards would also be worth framing.




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