16 October 2019
California Metal Type Foundry Still Alive
SAN FRANCISCO—
Linotype from Grabhorn machines
Linotype from Grabhorn machines
Although digital typesetting and offset lithography have largely rendered type casting obsolete, letterpress printing and type founding remains alive at Grabhorn with techniques and equipment a century old. One of perhaps 100 people worldwide who cast type.  By the 1980s, nearly all letterpress gear was abandoned when offset printing took over.
Pressroom full of letterpresses using metal type
Pressroom full of letterpresses using metal type
Grabhorn’s Institute has  kept the tradition alive with art prints, small editions of books, wedding invitations, and posters.The type is sold by the pound to letterpress printers. With letterpress printing, letters and images stand in relief.  More crucially, the type casts is used to print limited-edition books in the Grabhorn Institute’s adjacent pressroom on letterpress equipment of a similar vintage. Sold for hundreds to thousands of dollars each, these books form the largest part of the institute’s revenue and sustain it for the future.
Comments:
LATEST USED EQUIPMENT | RSS
Total Used Equipment Listings: 17
CLICK HERE to list your equipment
CLASSIFIED | RSS
Company for sale
Company wanted
CLICK HERE to list your business opportunity in the printing industry
Most Recent News Comment
Harold says:
A typical story of how a union brings down a corporation with pay demands, banked vacation days, dem...
North Island Publishing PrintCAN Print Jobs Canada’s Estimators' & Buyers' Guide MastheadOnline PaperFinder Print World 2010 Design City
Graphic Monthly Print Equipment gutenbergs' guide COPA industrial print