As my work and research continues to develop, I keep finding myself in the most brilliant situations that, a few years ago as I was starting down this printmaking path, I would never have dreamed I would actually be part of! So a few weeks ago, sitting in an Italian villa, drinking prosecco, surrounded by expert typographers and printmakers from across the world, I found myself in exactly one of those “pinch me” moments.
I was incredibly lucky to be selected as this years Europe recipient of a scholarship to attend TipoItalia1, a two-week residency working at the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione studying Italian type design, type revivals, printing with their insane collection of wood and metal type, and generally nerding out about all things letterpress & typographic.
The residency hosted twelve students with four expert tutors, from a range of backgrounds in printmaking and type design, with participants joining from the US, Brazil, Germany, Czech Republic, Australia, and the UK.
Now, I don’t necessarily identify myself as a “printer” all that often – I prefer to use the term “print adjacent” to describe my practices – and I definitely had zero experience with typography, type design & the software, so to start with I felt rather out of my depth among some very, very accomplished designers and printmakers.
The Museum
Tipoteca Italiana operates as many things – it’s a museum, an archive, a print shop, a library – all dedicated to letterpress printing, and it’s quite unlike any other letterpress museum I’ve ever been to. Established in 1995 by the Antiga brothers (who own Grafiche Antiga, a printing and publishing house), the collection is entirely non-profit and privately funded. Tipoteca works with graphic artists and designers from across the world to preserve Italian type design and letterpress printing, with regular exhibitions, workshops, guest printers – you name it.2
The collection that they hold is INSANE. Hundreds, if not thousands, of drawers of wood and metal type, hundreds of type specimens, and an enormous number of printing presses, ranging from small tabletop presses right through to huge cylinder presses. They also have a number of Monotype casters, which are still operational and casting fresh lead type. I was like a kid in a sweet shop.
Everything at Tipoteca is done with incredible care for the heritage and provenance of the equipment. The collection has come from a vast number of Italian printing works which, due to the obsolescence of letterpress printing in the wake of digital printing processes, are now long closed down – however, as an example of the way that Tipoteca approaches the preservation of the stories, all of the typefaces are archived not alphabetically, but by the name of the smaller printing shops that they were acquired from.
The Library
So aside from the frankly quite ridiculous number of physical typefaces that Tipoteca has in its collection, there is also a library of nearly 5000 volumes of type specimens, leaflets, rare books and technical manuals. We were lucky enough to be allowed access to a large number of these documents to inspect, photograph, and generally nerd out over.
There were some beautiful examples of Italian type design in the mix, and some incredible rarities – including a page from a genuine copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which was a bit of a jaw-dropping moment for me. Studying letterpress printing and its history this book marks a very important moment in terms of not just printmaking but culture in general – and so to be able to hold a physical piece of it was quite overwhelming!
Digital Type Revivals
One of the “tasks” we were set was to design our very own type revival, inspired by the type that we were seeing in both the collection at Tipoteca and our time in and around the Veneto.
I chose to work with this typeface from the collection – still have no idea what it is actually called, but I just loved the chunky wood type blocks and the open characters, which I figured could be fun to play with chromatic versions.
Getting used to the type design software, Glyphs, took a little while, picking up the rules and best practices for making lineworks (rule of 3rds for handle lengths on bezier curves, make sure your nodes are on the extremes – that sort of thing). Thankfully, we were under the guidance of type design masters Dan Rhatigan & Ricardo Olocco, who were there to steer us in the right direction.
I named my revival “Frizzante”, for no good reason other than I drank vastly more sparkling water in those two weeks that I ever had in my lifetime before (and a hell of a lot of prosecco, following the bubbles there). We made up little compositions with our typefaces, and these were turned into a group photopolymer plate of all the examples, which were then printed as keepsakes.
The Print Shop
Alongside the digital work with the type revivals, we also had the opportunity to spend time in Tipoteca’s print shop, pulling type specimens from various typefaces in the extensive collection, and playing with the printing presses in their dedicated print workshop.
I pulled a fair few type specimens whilst I was there, getting to rummage through all of the type drawers and handle that beautiful wood & metal type – we each printed a run of specimens to swap with each other at the end of the residency.
Alongside, we each printed a double-page spread which we combined together into a hand-bound book – each of us binding our own copy, with one left for the library at Tipoteca.
I printed one page, and had a mischievous hand in another…
My page was based on the Monotype caster – using a roll of the punched paper that controlled the casting unit, I pressure printed the words “Fonditrice Monotype”. The dots you can see inside the characters represent the co-ordinates of the matrices in the type caster, and allow air to pass through a series of channels to lift pins inside the mechanism, guiding the caster to the right spot. Seriously mad engineering.
Venice & Verona
Alongside working at Tipoteca, a number of excusions were arranged for us – both to explore a bit of Italy, and to take a look at some lovely Italian typeforms.
A day trip was organised to the city of Venice, starting with a train ride into the lagoon from Treviso. In the city, we met up with a lovely chap called Andrea (check out his instagram for type nerdery) who had popped into Tipoteca a few days before to give us a demonstration of calligraphy – in particular, looking at some Roman Trajan letterforms and how they are drawn. (Honestly, no idea how he could move a paintbrush around like that with the level of precision – I’ve tried, and it looks like a toddler with a crayon). Andrea took us on a walking tour around the less tourist-dense parts of the city, taking a look at the hand-painted signs and interesting typographic goodies. Stopped for a nice glass of lunch and some tasty cicchetti, then had the afternoon to ourselves to explore. I joined some others who headed to the Gallerie dell’Accademia to pretend to understand some art – and, quite unexpectedly, get to see the original sketch of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci!
The next visit was to the city of Verona (of apparently Romeo and Juliet fame, but I’m sure that’s not exactly the peak of the cultural highlights of the city!). We were joined at this point by Riccardo Olocco, another of our tutors who’s specialism is in type revivals, and were treated to visiting two of the libraries in the city. At the Biblioteca Civica Verona, which was particularly special, the curators had laid out some samples from printers and bookbinders in Verona throughout the centuries – it was utterly bonkers to be able to handle and inspect books and documents quite literally hundreds of years old, just out on the table for us.
There was a third trip that the group was taken on to visit the city of Rovereto, however I elected to stay back for an extra day printing and exploring Tipoteca. I mean, if you had the opportunity to have a whole type museum and printing workshop practically to yourself, wouldn’t you?
The Experience
Anyone that’s at all interested in letterpress printing and typography, I genuinely cannot recommend this residency enough. To spend two weeks immersed in all things type, working with such lovely people, was the hit of energy I needed to remind me why I’m doing my work & research in the first place – because its awesome fun, and there’s so much to learn!
A huge thank you to Rory Sparks, Mitch Blessing, Dan Rhatigan & Ricardo Olocco – firstly for picking me to be the recipient of the scholarship (without which I’d never have been able to attend), but also all their time, patience, and knowledge that they imparted to all of us over the two weeks. A massive thank you to the other attendees, who were all super lovely and open to sharing their wealth of knowledge, and also to Sandro & Leonardo at Tipoteca, who were so welcoming, friendly and accommodating to all of us over the residency.
Tipoteca – I’ll be back. You’ve got me hooked.
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