Sue Shaw Exhibition - 20-24 May 2025, London, UK

[Sallie Morris]

Susan Shaw (1932-2020) was a book designer, publisher and visionary founder of the Type Archive. This special exhibition in Lambeth, south London, being held close to where she lived, celebrates her six-decade career and lasting contribution to the preservation of Britain's typographic heritage.

Tue 20—Sat 24 May, Gallery open 11am—6pm, 39a Loughborough Rd, Brixton SW9 7TB
Free admission

BOLD CHARACTER

Designer, publisher & founder of the Type Archive

Trained as a librarian, Shaw began her career in publishing in the 1950s, working for market leaders like Chatto & Windus and Penguin. Her happiest period was at Faber & Faber where she forged a long creative partnership with the renowned lettering artist Berthold Wolpe.

In 1956 she established The Merrion Press, producing her own meticulously crafted publications. Her dedication to hot-metal typesetting and letterpress printing shone through in editions like Steingruber's Architectural Alphabet and Bewick wood engravings.

Commissions followed from the prestigious Roxburghe Club, including the acclaimed Great Book of Thomas Trevilian (2000), hailed by Maggs Bros as 'perhaps the greatest monument to the arts of the book'.

With the decline of letterpress printing, Shaw turned to preservation. In 1992, she founded the Type Museum (later the Type Archive), saving hundreds of tons of typecasting machinery from previous giants of the industry: Monotype, Stephenson Blake and DeLittle. This formed the National Typefounding Collection — an irreplaceable record of printing technology from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries.

For over three decades, she championed the artistry and engineering behind the printed letterform. Today, her legacy lives on in preserved collections, now held by the Science Museum, V&A and York University.

As well as original Merrion Press works, the exhibition will feature contributions from friends and collaborators such as Sir Quentin Blake and Berthold Wolpe, plus archival materials and artefacts such as the London Borough of Lambeth street signs which she was instrumental in redesigning.

Sue Shaw: A Bold Character offers a tribute to a woman whose strong vision and tireless dedication to typographic communication leaves a vibrant legacy.