Movable Type

[printsmurf]

Postcard from 1908   Statue d'Ambroise-Firmin Didot, Membre de l'Institut



The wording on the front states that the statue was erected by public subscription on 25 September 1890

[printsmurf]

Fritz Homann AG, Dissen    Series 'Druckgewerbe' (Printing) series of 10 cards from 1931 given with TEUTA MARGARINE

Cards 3,4 & 5 are of interest

Card 3 - Typecaster  (I love the Gutenberg portrait on the wall behind him)



Number 4 - Typesetter (Compositor)



Number 5 - Typecasting keyboard

[printsmurf]

Issued on 9 December 2005 to commemorate the first book printed with movable type in 1377, called the Jikjisimcheyojeol                  (South Korea)

[printsmurf]

Haarlem    Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Invention of Printing Laurens Coster, Inventor   1740

[printsmurf]

Issued on 20 September 2004 for the centenary of the Heraldo de Aragón newspaper              (Spain)

Not many stamps show wooden type

[printsmurf]

Spanish lottery ticket from 1990       Evolution and Progress

Lead type E   (image reversed so as to appear 'right reading')

[printsmurf]

Compositeurs devant leurs casses   (Compositors in front of their frames/cases)



l'imprimerie imagerie populaire pour l'education des ecoliers.  Popular imagery printing for the education of schoolchildren.
Publisher Ernest Meyer, 1900

[printsmurf]

Cinderella stamp from Hungary, 1936 for the 500th anniversary of Book printing

A KÖNYVNYOMTATAS - THE BOOK PRINTING
500 ÉVES - 500 YEARS OLD



I can't quite make out what letter (or design) it is supposed to be on the face of the piece of type.

[printsmurf]

Cinderella advertising stamp issued by the J. G. Schelter & Giesecke type foundry (Schriftgießerei) of Leipzig, Germany.The stamp dates to the Weimar Republic period.



Leipzig was a major international center for the printing and publishing industries, and Schelter & Giesecke was one of Germany's most prominent type foundries.

[printsmurf]

FRANCE, MEDAL, CLAUDE GARAMONT, TAILLEUR DE LETTRES, ARTS & CULTURE, 1981

[printsmurf]

Postcard        Compositors at Work at the Friends' Printing press, Tananarive, Madagascar   

[printsmurf]

Frederic Goudy's The Type Speaks

I AM TYPE

Of my earliest ancestry neither history nor relics remain. The wedge-shaped symbols impressed in plastic clay by Babylonian builders in the dim past foreshadowed me: from them, on through the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians, down to the beautiful manuscript letters of the mediaeval scribes, I was in the making.

With the golden vision of the ingenious Gutenberg, who first applied the principle of casting me in metal, the profound art of printing with movable types was born.

Cold, rigid and implacable I may be, yet the first impress of my face brought the Divine Word to countless thousands. I bring into the light of day the precious stores of knowledge and wisdom long hidden in the grave of ignorance. I coin for you the enchanting tale, the philosopher's moralising and the poet's fantasies; I enable you to exchange the irksome hours that come, at times, to everyone, for sweet and happy hours with books – golden urns filled with all the manna of the past.

In books, I present to you a portion of the eternal mind caught in its progress through the world, stamped in an instant and preserved for eternity. Through me, Socrates and Plato, Chaucer and Bards become your faithful friends who ever surround you and minister to you.

I am the leaden army that conquers the world. I am type.

F.W. Goudy

I post this photograph as I think it is quite appropriate to the last line of the poem.

'Soldiers of Lead' from the London Society of Compositors, forming part of the Lord Mayor's Parade in 1928, armed with metal types in place of rifles.