Output details

The materials of typefounding: a list of surviving collections

The declining use of cast metal types for printing, a process that began towards the middle of the 20th century, resulted in their almost complete abandonment by 1980, and their replacement by photographic processes for typesetting, which in their turn were largely superseded by digital typesetting by 2000. Large stocks of the basic materials for making types, the punches and the matrices, had been a part of the essential record of the history of the design and making of types. Major collections survived in the hands of some commercial enterprises and some national institutions. Questions relating to their history and their future conservation had been inadequately addressed: there was no single account of their current location, nor of the documentation relating to them that had been compiled.This research on ‘the materials of typefounding’ was designed to fulfil this function. It located the collections, which are chiefly in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, and gave an account of the published and unpublished documentation, largely from interviews with those who had their care, and who still preserved the working experience of trades that are largely extinct (there is a single living trained punchcutter). The process has made necessary the locating and study of the written accounts of these trades, which are still largely unpublished and lacking in informed investigation.