Favourite fonts

 

Fiona and I have been on a mission to create a full cabinet of the metal letterpress type we like and use reasonably regularly. We had to select type from across 4 cabinets and our goal was to create a single cabinet. That goal was realised today after about 12 months of on and off effort - see the cabinet above. 

The cabinet is an antique that has had many many years of use - if you look closely you can see where type trays have been replaced and repaired; some are still damaged; and different  labelling has been done. 

Some process photos of the sifting, sorting and transferring from the past few weeks follow. 

To create each new tray of type in our cabinet it was necessary to empty out another tray that would live in one of the other 3 cabinets; and then transfer the type from one of those cabinets - which Fiona had marked with a white dot - into the vacant tray. It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to transfer each tray of type depending on the size of the font and volume of type. So  over the last 12 months many many hours have spent doing this task.

Completing this task just makes our letterpress printing life that bit more organised. the remaining task for me is to transfer some of our favourite Elongated Anglo Saxon type which we bought in an online auction into the cabinet.