Monotype Collection Update for the Science Museum Group

[printsmurf]

I recently received this email from Tamsin Stewart, Project Manager, Cultural Associates Oxford

Monotype Collection Update for the Science Museum Group

Thank you for taking part in the survey conducted by Cultural Associates Oxford.

Your insights and feedback have been very helpful and will contribute to our thinking around future engagement with the Monotype collection. We are now considering a number of short and long term options to continue engagement and access to this collection.

Our team is currently reviewing the Monotype collection, carrying out in depth research into the objects we care for. Online audiences can now explore a new webpage on the Science Museum website, which acts as a hub for all our Monotype-related content.

This includes the 4,500 objects with images on our popular online collection, a new online story about the collection, as well as two new films that capture the history of the Monotype Corporation and the detailed process of making a matrices from design to print Monotype Collection. Please do share this content with your networks if you think it will be of interest.

Throughout the next 12 months will continue to add new content to the webpage in the form of blog posts and online stories, as well as enhancing online records with new interpretation.

If you'd like to be notified by the Science Museum Group about developments or events relating to its Monotype Collection, please use Mailing List to add your details to the mailing list. Any notifications will be sent via email within the next 12 months.

[David Bolton]

Yes, I had one of these emails too. And as it happens, a few weeks ago I was able to show one of the members of Cultural Associates Oxford one of my composition casters in action, and all the bits one needs to run one.

The Science Museum has put on-line lots of digital photos of founts of punches, but alas no accompanying matrices.

I suppose Monotype Hot Metal would not have needed a store of matrix founts, as they had the punches and would produce the matrices on demand.

So the Science Museum probably will not have inherited matrix founts.

The various ledgers and cards that record specific matrices are now all at the depot in Wroughton, but alas encased in plastic, so at present inaccessible.

One day, perhaps...

Another problem is that the Type Drawing Office records are archived elsewhere, and are not part of the Monotype Collection, which means there is a gap in the the Museum's information about typefaces.

David Bolton
The Alembic Press