Type Museum

The Type Museum is a unique and massive collection of the majority of the legacy of type founding in England. These famous foundries and composing systems supplied the world with type in all languages. The museum was founded in 1992 and is located in Stockwell, south London.

Overview

The Type Museum is the final repository of many of the original forms, (punches and matrices), which originated the literature in those languages. The skills have also been preserved in this working Museum which manufactures matrices for letterpress printing as a part of the Museum with which the public could interact. The Museum has become a valuable educational resource for many Colleges. The historic collection of presses was being assembled in order to satisfy the demand for an educational and experimental type workshop. The punches, matrices and patterns of some of the most famous and successful metal and wood type foundries held at the Type Museum represent somewhere between five and eleven million artefacts. Much of the work of cataloguing this vital aspect of the national heritage has only begun.

The collections are particularly unique in being the only location in which successive generations of the technological development in the art and crafts of type design and manufacture (from hand foundry and machine composition through wood type, photography and film setting which laid the foundation for the digital typography of today. This is a collection of a vital heritage and international cultural importance that should it be dispersed, will be impossible to assemble again. The Museum has suffered financially from failing to find a site and a building sufficient to display the wealth of materials that the Museum has successfully collected over the last fourteen years. That this might cause the loss of access to these collections has galvanised the typographic community and the members of the wider media and communications industries in support of this now locked and hidden jewel of global cultural history.

Collections

The Museum’s major collections include:

* The Stephenson Blake Collection of English foundry type with industrial and hand casting equipment. Stephenson Blake & Company in their long trading history acquired many of the other famous-name English type foundries and these all now reside at the Type Museum.
* The Monotype Collection covers the entire history of Monotype Corporation’s global supply of fine letterpress machine composition in almost all languages and continues as a working company within the Museum.
* The Robert DeLittle wood type manufactory — the last specialist English wood type manufacturer is a superb resource in this vital, engaging and under-researched area of type design.

Entities

The Type Museum involves the following entities: the Type Museum Trust, which is a Registered Charity 1009198 and a Registered Museum 1101 and its subsidiary The Type Museum Limited Registered Company 3677895 (trading as Monotype Hot-Metal).

Location

:100 Hackford Road:London SW9 0QU:England

Recent events

In May 2006, staff at the Type Museum were informed they would be laid off with immediate effect and the Museum closed because of lack of funding.In May 2008 it emerged that a proposal has been made to move the collections to a National Museum of Science and Industry(NMSI) storage facility in Wiltshire. In July 2008 a national petition opposing the removal to storage began on the 10 Downing Street site [http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/typemuseum/ We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop the proposed move into storage of the Type Archive, from its present home at the Type Museum, London.] by the Type Museum Society. July 2008 The UK Department of Culture Media and Sport confirmed in a reply to an enquiry that this decision had been taken by the Museum Trustees: "Thank you for your recent letter to Andy Burnham regarding the proposed move into storage of the Type Archive from its present home at the Type Museum in Lambeth.The Type Museum is an independent trust and is not sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The decision to move its collections to the National Museum of Science and Industry's (NMSI) facility in Swindon was taken by the Type Museum's Trustees. The DCMS has no role in this issue.DCMS provides £125,000 per annum to the NMSI, to contribute to the storage costs of the NMSI's Monotype collection held at the Type Museum. Other than this, DCMS has no involvement with the Type Museum.It is unfortunate that Lambeth may lose this museum, but I understand that the Type Museum is unsustainable in its current location and is at threat of going into receivership. This seems to be the best available solution for the Type Museum collections; the typographical collections will be saved for the nation and stay together. Yours sincerely Tracy Dalby Public Engagement and Recognition Unit"

External links

* [http://www.typemuseum.org/ The Type Museum website]
* [http://www.typemuseumsociety.org/ The Type Museum Society website]