Entropy…

Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.-
-Robert Bringhurst

The Tipoteca in Cornuda, Italy, is a museum devoted to the history of letterpress printing and typefaces.

A Fount of Fonts.

The computer has put the word “font” into common parlance as a synonym for typeface. But ask most people, even many young graphic designers, where the word comes from, and blank stares abound. (For the record, it’s from the 16th-century French word fonte, which is derived from fonder, or “to melt,” and denotes the action or process of casting or founding.) That is why I have made a pilgrimage, with School of Visual Arts students, to Cornuda, Italy, a village about 40 miles north of Venice, near the Palladio-designed Villa Barbaro, to the Tipoteca, a museum devoted to the history of letterpress printing and typefaces, or fonts.

Tipoteca Italiana is a private foundation that was founded in 1995 to advance printing knowledge and preserve venerable printing technologies. Its founder, Silvio Antiga, a 65-year-old printer who owns a printing firm in the Veneto region, has collected more than 20 vintage presses and typesetting machines, along with hundreds of wood and metal type “fonts.” The smartly designed, modern museum includes a working print shop, which employs master craftsmen who hand-set type and pull proofs. It is open to the public — and has become a mecca for designers and students from all over the world.

The principal guide and curator is Sandro Berra, whose background is in Classics and who has a passion for calligraphy and typefaces. His mission is to immerse visitors in this 500-year-old communications revolution, and to the Italian contribution to bookmaking and typography. This immersion includes an introduction to xylography, engraving and lithography, and involves having visitors set type, print sheets and — since he is not the average uptight docent — hold, and turn the pages of, rare masterpieces of printing history, including books by Aldus Manutius (1449-1515), a typographer and the first publisher of printed books.

“Like many other kids,” Berra said, “I filled pages and pages with lettering. In Italian, my university degree is in lettere antiche [ancient literature, but literally ‘old letters’]. I confused the exact meaning of these ‘old letters,’ and this is why I ended up working with metal and wood typefaces.”

Tipoteca has an incredible collection of printing equipment, but as Berra noted, “it’s very hard to say which are the most valued holdings.” The punches hand-cut by Amoretti, the Manuale Tipografico (1818) by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), many type specimen books, all the hand presses and the cases of type are the highlights of an incredible treasure trove. “I believe that Tipoteca is a valuable place because people can come in and experience letterpress as it used to be until 30 years ago,” he said.

During the past 30 years, since phototype was phased out and the digital revolution took hold, an entire printing universe changed from rarefied to desktop. Today anyone who sets type by hand and prints on a hand press works as Gutenberg used to work in the 15th century. “To print original wood type and use a 150-year-old press probably is becoming more revolutionary than having an iPad,” Berra said.

It is hard to determine the exact number of the typefaces the Tipoteca has on hand, and acquisitions are continuous. The wood type archive consists of 399 drawers filled with type plus another 1,700 boxes that are temporarily stored in a warehouse. There are printed samples of each of them, “so at least we have an idea of their design,” Berra said. The Tipoteca is endowed with around 1,000 “founts” of metal type in all styles. In the warehouse, there are about 700 typecases that haven’t yet been cleaned or catalogued.

The vast majority of the museum’s holdings were acquired from out-of-business print shops around Italy, and locating and recovering “the material” from these sources keeps Berra on the run. Presses and typesetting machines, once acquired, are then totally restored. The Tipoteca’s master printer, Ivano, has an incredible ability to repair any sort of machinery. “For hobby, he repairs analog Reflex cameras,” Berra said.

But Berra explained that his goal is more than just preserving the old tools: “It’s somehow saving our intimate relation with paper, ink and type, the substance of printing.” To which he added, “In good type we trust!”

Tags: Typography