Exploring printing heritage in theory and in practice
AEPM annual conference | 3-5 September 2025 | Winterbourne House, University of Birmingham, UK.
→ University of Birmingham online booking service
Over the past few years, digital humanities and craft revival have prompted a resurgence of interest in analogue forms of communication and the technologies that enabled them. Letterpress, the once dominant printing process is now commercially obsolete and offset lithography is increasingly challenged by digital printing. The numbers of people trained in historical printing techniques are declining and heritage organisations often struggle to find the space, resources, or know-how to curate their printing collections. Usable equipment and material are becoming increasingly scarce, and those with the knowledge to repair and restore it are a dying breed. Preservation requires documentation, interpretation, and practice but also imaginative approaches to their adaptation and use in the present. Heritage sites provide the raw material—artefacts, machinery, documents, and archives—and experiential environments by which historians can understand the situations and locations of printing. On the other hand, printing historians produce the necessary context—information, data, interpretation, and scholarly assessment—necessary for the heritage sites to effectively exploit their collections and interpret printing history for a wide audience.
The conference will consider the role of printing heritage in the twenty-first century and discuss the interdependent relationship between heritage sites and printing historians — how it works, how it could it work, the benefits, problems, and possible new models for working.
Wednesday 3 September
13:30
Registration and welcome
14:00
Session 1 : Places and spaces
Julieanne McMahon-Grier
From discovery to engagement: the evolving story of Gray’s Printing Press
This paper details the ongoing transformation of Gray’s Printing Press in Strabane, Northern Ireland, into a dynamic and engaging heritage site despite limited resources.
Our approach focuses on enhancing the historical understanding of the press and innovating operational and engagement strategies to improve accessibility.
Recent research has addressed the previously incomplete and inaccurate historical records of Gray’s, enabling the development of a comprehensive narrative that contextualises the site within its local and broader setting.
The presentation will explore the next steps to develop collaborative strategies to activate the site for public benefit, focusing on operational models that boost visitor engagement and ensure sustainability. It highlights the use of significant upcoming events, such as the America 250 commemoration, to underscore Gray’s regional and historical significance, enhancing its role as a catalyst for regional cultural tourism.
The discussion will cover both the challenges and successes encountered at Gray’s Printing Press and will emphasise the importance of research, collaboration, and innovation in transforming print heritage sites into dynamic cultural resources.
Julieanne McMahon-Grier is a Cultural Heritage Curator with the National Trust in Northern Ireland. She supports a diverse range of historic sites through collections care, research, interpretation, and public engagement, with a focus on inclusive storytelling and sustainable use. With a background in eighteenth-century studies, history of art, and visual communications, Julieanne combines academic insight with creative experience. Her work is shaped by a cross-disciplinary foundation in interpretation, conservation, and design, aimed at connecting people with heritage in ways that are accessible and engaging. She is committed to deepening connections between communities and the stories embedded in place.
Julieanne.McMahon@nationaltrust.org.uk
www.linkedin.com/in/julieanne-mcmahon-grier-19646351
Heike Schnotale and Katharina Walter
The print shop as a museum object: The Offizin Haag-Drugulin in the Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig
In 2023, the Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig took over the collection of Offizin Haag-Drugulin (OHD) from Dresden. A still-active print store with typesetters and printers was closed, listed as a historical monument and transferred to the museum’s collection. Heike Schnotale, former typesetter at the OHD, and Katharina Walter, cultural historian and former director of the Leipzig Museum, will provide an insight into the content-related and methodological challenges of inventorying and
documenting the historical collection. They discuss the possibilities, consequences and limitations that arise from this for the historical research of a print shop as a tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
Moving a historic print shop to a museum raises the fundamental question of whether and how the preservation of a “movable monument” can succeed in the completely different structural, functional and spatial contexts of a museum institution. The planning of the dismantling and transfer of the inventory already made it clear that the spatial organization of the working material, which significantly determined and depicted the entire operational process, was lost with the deconstruction. As a result, information about work processes and the interplay between the various technical areas,
which is extremely important for a cultural and knowledge-historical description and interpretation, is no longer available. Even the specific practices of typesetting and printing that developed in a print shop over the years can no longer be reconstructed without the descriptions of the employees. The lecture aims to show how highly problematic the integration of a printing monument into the collection of a museum and for historical research is, and that it is more than the signing of objects and their spatial storage.
Heike Schnotale studied graphic design and photography at the University of Art Linz, Austria. After graduating, she trained as typesetter at Offizin Haag-Drugulin under Eckehart Schumacher-Gebler where she stayed until the Offizin was closed in 2023. In 2022, she co-authored the first book on letterpress printing in Germany since 50 years. Since 2023, she has been self-employed as a typesetter, designer and lecturer with her own workshop, Officina Arcana.
Katharina Walter holds a diploma in Communication Design from the University of Applied Sciences Mainz and a Master’s degree in cultural history and theory from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She worked as a research assistant for the Cluster of Excellence »Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory« at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from 2013 to 2018. From 2023 to March 2025, she was director of the Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig and is now working again as a
curator and cultural and media scientist with a focus on the cultural technique of typography.
Tim Bryars and Hazel Wilkinson
Benjamin Franklin at Great St Barts – recovering a forgotten print heritage site
In February 2025 the Church of St Bartholomew the Great celebrated the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s first visit to London, during which he worked as a printer for Samuel Palmer, whose shop was inside the church’s ancient Lady Chapel. The University of Reading lent the church their reproduction of one of the original presses Franklin used during his first visit to London, and throughout February hand-press printers used the press to perform demonstrations and workshops, transforming the Lady Chapel back into an eighteenth-century print shop. The church also hosted a series of talks on Franklin and printing, for students, researchers, and the public. In this paper, the organiser of these events, Tim Bryars, will talk about his experience of re-interpreting the Lady Chapel of St Bartholomew’s as a site of print heritage. Hazel Wilkinson will speak about Franklin’s first London visit, and how his Autobiography can help us to understand the types of spaces used for printing and related crafts in the early modern world. Both speakers will reflect on the challenges and possibilities of engaging twenty-first-century audiences with the print heritage of spaces that have since been repurposed, and in which the material evidence of print are lost or located elsewhere.
Tim Bryars has been a full-time antiquarian bookseller since graduating from Oxford in 1995. He opened a bookshop in Cecil Court, in London’s west end, in 2004. He has organized the London Map Fair since 2001 and has written on 20th century maps and cartoon and satirical mapping, but has always maintained an interest in books and printing of the hand-press era.
Hazel Wilkinson is Associate Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham, where she is also Deputy Director of the Institute for Data and AI. She works on eighteenth-century literature and book history, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Centre for Printing History and Culture.
tim@bryarsandbryars.co.uk
h.j.wilkinson@bham.ac.uk
15:30
Visits
15:30-17:00
Winterbourne House & Garden, Press, Library, Exhibitions, Shop, etc
17:00-17:45
Cadbury Research Library orLapworth Museum
18:00-18:45
Cadbury Research Library or Lapworth Museum
19:00
Dinner
at Cuore, University of Birmingham
Thursday 4 September
09:30
Session 2 : Databases
Claire Bolton and David Bolton
The role of the practitioner
This paper is based on the Alembic Press’s experiences over 50 years which have combined the theory and practice of printing and show how practitioners form a bridge between museums, heritage sites and historians. The presentation will raise questions of restoration, cataloguing and operation of equipment; the promulgation of information; teaching and training in specialist skills. Such as:
- The rescue and restoration of printing equipment at the monastic township of New Norcia in Australia, bringing the Abbey Press back to life as a working printshop as well as a museum exhibit. (The nature of a Heritage site/Museum.)
- The running of Monotype equipment setting and casting metal type since 1996, which has entertained some 800 visitors. (Providing metal type, which is essential for keeping alive Gutenberg’s invention.)
- The printing of hard copy Guides to printing places worldwide, and creation and maintenance of four websites that list: over 300 typecase constructions and layouts; Monotype faces, keybars, parts, publications, etc.; Australian printing museums and equipment, practitioners and equipment, private presses, etc.; UK letterpress resources including courses, supplies, etc. (Provision of appropiate websites/guides and the difficulties of collecting information and keeping it up-to-date, etc.)
- Running and attending book fairs, workshops, having apprentices and resident students, teaching at summer schools etc. giving lectures, etc. (Spreading the knowledge and gaining new practitioners.)
The Alembic Press. Claire and David Bolton have run the Alembic Press since 1972, and been printing and publishing private press books since 1978, with an emphasis on books about paper or printing. Over the years the Press has housed Albion, Golding, Vandercook etc presses and a large collection of type. Since 1996 it has also run two Monotype pneumatic keyboards, two composition casters and one super caster, along with a large collection of matrices and moulds, and has set up and maintains four websites listing typecases, Monotype equipment, Australian printing museums and equipment, UK letterpress resources, courses, practitioners, etc. During this time the Press has been able to run workshops, open days, etc., but since downsizing in 2010 it has concentrated more on keeping its Monotype equipment running, and on researching early printing history, with several academic books and papers published, and the commissioning of a replica Dürer wooden hand press. Thus over the years the Alembic Press has been concerned about how people (printers and non-printers) find out about printing heritage – both the physical objects and the skills required to use them.
Rémi Jimenes and Anna Baydova
A database of Renaissance printing types and engraved materials: BATYR
Launched in 2012 as part of the Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes (BVH) digitisation programme, BaTyR (Base de Typographie de la Renaissance) is a database that, until 2024, focused exclusively on the decoration of editions printed in Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries. Using automatic extraction tools developed by the University of Tours and applied to the BVH’s digital facsimiles, it has made it possible to index, describe and identify decorative materials (ornamental letters, fleurons, etc.) in order to study the circulation of engraved blocks and decorative motifs, in particular by distinguishing original plates from their copies.
From 2023 to 2027, the French National Research Agency is funding the development of the database as part of the TypoReF (« Typographie de la Renaissance Française, 1470-1640 ») research project. The new version of the database will be freely available online from spring 2025. BaTyR now uses the IIIF protocol, which allows access to the entire content of electronic libraries. The project includes the addition of new tables for the indexing and description of fonts of types, linked to the main reference repositories (TW, Vervliet, French Post-Incunabulas, etc.), as well as original printing materials : woodblocks, punches, matrices, and archival documents mentioning them. For the moment, it is devoted to French printing materials, but it could be opened up more widely. We hope that in the future, this new tool will make it possible to identify anonymous editions, to study in greater depth the main printers involved in the evolution of typographic forms, to analyse the conditions under which materials were produced and sold, and to develop new image analysis tools based on the principles of artificial intelligence.
The aim of this paper is to present the new version of the BaTyR database and to explain its new functionalities and the content elements which will be useful for librarians, historians, graphic designers and typographers.
Rémi Jimenes… Anna Baydova… Biogs demandées, 14 mai.
Pawel Schulz
A custom digital database for integrating institutional knowledge and enhancing engagement with collections
This paper presents a custom-developed digital database designed to address challenges in documenting, interpreting, and facilitating access to printing heritage collections, focusing on physical type objects. This project demonstrates a model for bridging the gap between historical artefacts and contemporary research and practice. The project is ongoing, with the core
functionality, and data sets implemented.
The database moves beyond simple existing inventories (such as spreadsheets) to create an integrated system. It serves as a repository for institutional knowledge, consolidating information often dispersed among curators, researchers, volunteers, and visiting practitioners. A key function is linking physical type artefacts with corresponding printed specimens held within the museum, enriching the context for both.
Central to the database is detailed photographic documentation of fonts, with individual glyph images mapped to Unicode values and inventory data. This structured data enables programmatic analysis, such as assessing language support. The database enhances the use of the collection for letterpress printing and artistic practice by providing information on the
typefaces. This documentation provides value for typographic research and contemporary design practice. It allows for the study of characteristics like spacing and optical size adjustments. By presenting photographs along with printed specimens, it offers a comprehensive view for historical analysis and serves as a resource for digital typeface revivals. The platform has the potential for integration with type design software, enabling programmatic image import. It has already inspired related
projects, including a non-linear interpolation plugin for type design software and the creation of a new wooden display font based on the documented types.
This initiative shows how targeted digital tools can support the core functions of heritage institutions by improving documentation and facilitating knowledge sharing between historiansand practitioners. It stimulates new forms of engagement, and interpretation of, printing heritage.
Paweł Schulz is a design freelancer from Poland. He obtained a master’s degree in Typeface Design from the University of Reading in 2022, in 2023 his multi-script typeface family Esja won the student Type Directors Club award. He has
commercial experience working on branding, typefaces and various graphic design-related projects. Although not a programmer by trade he is technically minded, and often mixes coding with his design and research practice. Currently, he volunteers at the TYPa printing and papermaking museum in Estonia.
11:00
Refreshments
11:30
Session 3 : Hot metal challenges
Sallie Morris
Caretaking typefounding material in the twenty-first century
The Type Archive in London was founded by Sue Shaw in 1992 and brought together three major British typefounding collections: Monotype Hot Metal from Surrey, Stephenson Blake from Sheffield, and DeLittle from York. The Type Archive was a working centre, with all kinds of printing-related equipment in regular use by experienced operators, who in turn shared their knowledge with others.
This presentation will recount the experience of getting involved with the Archive in 2012, what it was possible to see and learn, and what it was like to volunteer there for many years. The results of an inventory project that was carried out in 2019–2020 for the Monotype Corporation Collection will be discussed. This presentation will reveal the efforts of a small dedicated team of volunteers to keep The Type Archive running and manufacturing matrices after the Founder died in 2020, and the options explored in order to keep the material together and in use. Ultimately it could not stop the decant of an estimated 800 tonnes of material during 2023 and the first half of 2024. Careful decisions were made in line with charitable objectives about where certain material went next. Insights will be shared about the funded work carried out by a team focused on the Monotype and Stephenson Blake collections since 2023.
Sallie Morris has a long-standing interest in typefaces, printing and graphic design. She studied in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at University of Reading. She worked as a graphic designer in Reading and London for almost ten years. Her PhD focused on the design and manufacture of metal type in the first half of the twentieth century, and led to more than ten years involvement with The Type Archive in London. In recent years she has worked for The Type Archive, University of Reading, and the Science Museum. She is currently a curator at Science Museum.
Danila Rygovskiy and Katerina Grushka
Machine typesetting as heritage
Practically forgotten by the world, the linotype was considered one of the machines that “changed the course of history” (Chaline 2013: 46-51). Anderson claims the increase in newspapers and books, made possible by machine typesetting, fueled the worldwide growth in national awakening during the late 19th and early 20th century (Anderson 2006: 33-37). The rapid increase in printed materials during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was made possible by machine typesetting (McLuhan 1965: 172), transforming the way information was produced and distributed.
Today, these machines have lost this industrial communication role, and the last specimen can be found mostly in printing museums, art studios and other rare typography-related spaces. Too often they are found collecting dust in the far depths of a collection. Only a few places still have trained compositors or machine operators able to use and maintain them. However, we see a growing community of those interested in reviving machine typesetting skills, preserving knowledge and raising awareness of the impact these machines had on society.
To a certain extent, current interest in machine typesetting and letterpress in general can be compared to the Arts and Crafts movement, which sparked as a result of the mechanization of the printing process and defended older letterpress technology for creating small-run but exquisitely designed books (Jury 2004: 14). The revival of the typesetting machines is currently framed as a handicraft, rather than an industrial process, reframing the historical intention of these machines. The current panel addresses community building around the preservation of machine typesetting as part of printing heritage, featuring talks of the specialists sharing their experiences and thoughts on the issue. There are lessons to be learnt from these machines, from the reshaping of craftsmanship and art, working skills and industrial knowledge to connect with wider audiences and grow interest in an obsolete and complex printing system.
Panelists:
Danila Rygovskiy: The Monotype System in Estonia: Typesetting Machines and Typefaces as a Part of Estonian Printing Heritage
This presentation focuses on the history of Monotype typesetting in Estonia, showing the challenges of historical research on rare equipment in a small Baltic country. Estonia was one of the countries whose printing industry was dependent on exported technologies and equipment, which was, however, crucial for preserving Estonian identity, language and culture. It also developed its own printing tradition, which can be described as a typographic identity – a fusion of regional influences and local practices. In particular, this presentation will track a history of usage of Monotype technologies (i.e., machines, typefaces) in Estonia.
Katerina Grushka: Accessibility and Engagement in the Preservation of Typesetting Heritage
One of the discussed challenges faced by The Hot Type Network is the shortage of individuals willing and able to operate, maintain, and repair typesetting machines. This issue raises broader questions about accessibility and knowledge transfer in the field of printing heritage. A key concern is how to engage a wider audience when many of these machines remain hidden behind museum doors. The traditional pathways into the profession often require early exposure and long-term training, making it difficult for newcomers to enter the field. Katerina will focus on her experiences in restoring an ADAST Grafopress GPE machine in a local community space to facilitate typesetting and printing workshops, an initiative that has been met with great enthusiasm from the community. Prioritising accessibility over gatekeeping, she advocates for an inclusive approach to knowledge sharing. Her experience highlights that the primary challenge is not a lack of enthusiasm but the structural barriers and biases that discourage enthusiasts from outside the traditional printing community.
12:30
Lunch
14:00
Session 4 : Printing, teaching, researching
Rhiannon Daniels, Jennifer Batt, John McTague, Tamsin Badcoe, Angie Butler
Bristol Common Press : preserving and developing early modern print culture through practice-based research
Bristol Common Press (BCP) is a working print shop with historic presses located within the University of Bristol. It was established in 2021 by print historians working across European and English early modern print cultures as a centre for practice-based research and teaching. We are one of the few print shops in the UK with a replica 18th-century common press, which is in regular use, as well as two Albion presses, a large collection of metal type and wood letter, and a growing assortment of more portable modern presses. As well as a centre for practice-based historical research, BCP functions as a laboratory for creative practices beyond the early modern period.
A roundtable with five speakers affiliated with BCP will consider the following interconnected topics:
- Examples of practice-based research which underscore the relevance of heritage materials and processes for book historians, and offer new insights into historic practices for contemporary letterpress printers.
- Examples of using 21st-century technologies to make printing history portable and accessible.
- Our BCP training and apprenticeship schemes designed to enable our print shop to be accessible and to grow new audiences for letterpress.
- Some of the challenges of recreating historic print practices in the 21st century and the value of recreative practice in interdisciplinary research, teaching, and making.
- The challenges of inventorying, curating, and storing heritage items still used for practical printing within a university environment.
- Reflections on the role of letterpress within different national heritage contexts: comparisons between the UK and Italy.
Dr Rhiannon Daniels is co-founder and co-director of BCP and Associate Professor in Italian at the University of Bristol. Research interests include the reception of Boccaccio, printing in Italy up to 1600, especially book design, paratexts, and early modern print shops as sites of collaboration. Publications include Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520 (2009) and Printing Boccaccio’s Lives: The Canonisation of a Vernacular Author (forthcoming 2026).
Dr Jennifer Batt is Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Bristol, specialising in eighteenth-century poetry, periodical cultures, writing by women, and labouring-class writing. She is currently editing Aphra Behn’s ‘Lycidus’ for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn. She is the author of Class, Patronage, and Poetry in Hanoverian England: Stephen Duck, The Famous Threshing Poet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2020), and the co-founder and co-director of Bristol Common Press.
Dr John McTague is a co-founder and co-director of BCP and an Associate Professor in Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Bristol, where he teaches and researches late-Stuart and Hanoverian literary, political, and news cultures, the history and practice of print, and the history of historiography. He is the author of Things that Didn’t Happen (Boydell and Brewer, 2019), a scholarly editor (of Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane and John Dryden’s correspondence), and has published essays on Jonathan Swift, Delarivier Manley, political poetic miscellanies, the warming pan scandal of 1688-89, and ‘practical’ satires of the eighteenth century.
Dr Tamsin Badcoe, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. Research interests include the study of English poetry, prose, and drama of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, early modern environments and labour, and the early modern book trade, with a particular focus on the relationship between text and image. Publications include Edmund Spenser and the Romance of Space (2019).
Dr Angie Butler, Centre for Print Research, UWE Bristol, works with embodied research methodologies, Slow methods and practices of care within letterpress printing and book arts. Current projects include the Women Artist-Printers Portfolio to be launched at Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair London, Between the Body and the Book: text practices, for the forthcoming volume, Embodied Knowledge: a handbook, edited by Prof. Helen Smith & Dr Georgina Wilson (Thin Ice Press), exhibition and public seminar, Nordic Letterpress Network & Friends at The Swedish Printmakers’ Association Gallery, Stockholm.
Marie Kympers and Armina Ghazaryan
Passing on wood type to future generations: from manual typesetting to digital revivals
The Museum of Industry would like to share some thoughts and experiences on a recent collaboration with graphic design students, exploring printing heritage in practice and bringing it into the 21st century.
On the initiative of their teacher Frederik Berlaen, the 3rd bachelor graphic design students at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent have to design revival typefaces based on wood type. While most students are using type catalogues as a source, six of them took on the extra challenge to start from actual wood type. They came to the museum’s printing workshop, browsed through the comprehensive wood type collection and each chose a typeface that appealed to them. From this, they made several proof prints with the help of workshop supervisor Armina Ghazaryan: a practical introduction to manual typesetting and at the same time a brief history lesson on typography.
Based on the prints, the students are creating a digital revival as well as two own interpretations on the design. If forces them to think about how historical type design can still be relevant in a contemporary digital context. To create a fully functional digital font from (often incomplete) wood type really puts their design skills to the test. It requires missing letters or even the entire lower case to be completed. Scaling, spacing and kerning are looked at in different ways than what the students are used to. This way the heritage collection is not only a creative inspiration for today’s designers but also gives them a deeper understanding of the design process.
The result of their work is part of the temporary exhibition “Typefaces”, on view at the Museum of Industry from July 2025 through January 2026. This exhibition sheds light on several projects regarding the museum’s wood type collection, from a behind-the-scenes look on the inventory and digitisation process and historical research to contemporary artistic use of wood type.
Marie Kympers holds a master’s degree in history (University of Ghent, 2012). She has been working as a researcher and exhibition curator at the Museum of Industry since 2017. She coordinated the renewal of the printing department at the museum.
Armina Ghazaryan has been working as a graphic designer since 2009. After many years of volunteering, she joined the Museum of Industry as a full-time employee in 2024. She coordinates day-to-day operations at the printing department, teaches workshops, creates letterpress prints and helps cataloguing the museum’s type collection.
Edwin Pickstone and Frances Robertson
The Caseroom at 60: sustaining print heritage at Glasgow School of Art
This paper will discuss the history of print equipment acquisition and use at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) since c.1950. It will also offer key insights into how these facilities, embedded within an educational context, can offer unique opportunities for access, engagement and understanding of heritage print technologies for emerging generations of designers and artists. In effect, students and external research associates can be immersed in deep, sustained, hands-on study lasting for years in a process of active contextualisation that both understands the past and works towards future print and graphic languages.
The Caseroom was formally established as a facility for Letterpress design and print at GSA in 1964. It expanded the previous range of training resources towards industrial print skills such as commercial art (illustration and industrial print mediums), typography and related book arts such as book design, art direction and bookbinding that had been part of the Arts & Crafts inflected curriculum since the era of Francis H. Newbery (Director 1885–1914). This 60th anniversary year was a potent opportunity to understand the history, context and relevance of heritage print and typographic processes in design education. Pairing research in the GSA Archives and Special Collections with interviews, meeting both print-trade trained technical and academic staff and alumni, we charted the introduction of technologies, design disciplines and sub-divided subject areas reflecting the shifting value of print in a wider cultural backdrop. These direct testimonies connected us to the wider history of trade printing in Scotland and to understand how these individuals connected with each other. New insights into the pivotal role of Wood Engraving within book arts and illustration brought to light a fascinating range of works which sit between current Fine Art and Design practices. In turn, this inspired activities to reintroduce the technique to contemporary students. Connecting with graduates has revealed the impact that formative experiences in the Caseroom have had on subsequent careers and shows how the opportunity for sustained engagement with print provided by arts education can offer unique opportunities to invent for the future, contributing to the preservation of print heritage for future generations.
A free copy of our publication The Caseroom, 60 Years of Letterpress etc. at The Glasgow School of Art will be available for all conference attendees.
Edwin Pickstone, Lecturer, Typography Technician and Researcher, Communication Design Dept, The Glasgow School of Art
Dr Frances Robertson, Independent Researcher, formerly Reader in Material Cultures of Drawing, Design History and Theory Dept, The Glasgow School of Art
15:30
Visits
15:30-17:00
Winterbourne House & Garden, Press, Library, Exhibitions, Shop, etc.
17:00-17:45
Cadbury Research Library or Lapworth Museum
18:00
Buffet at Winterbourne
Friday 5 September
09:30
Annual general meeting of the AEPM. News and updates from the members
12:00
Lunch
13:30
Session 5 : Moving forward
Georgina Grant and Helen Williams
Can you come and look at this please? Industrial skills, printing machines and buildings at risk
In October 2023 a successful meeting bringing together museum curators, librarians, other heritage professionals, academics and hands-on printers was hosted at National Museums of Scotland Collection Centre, led by Georgina Grant of National Museum Scotland and Helen Williams of Scotland’s Printing Heritage. The event proved the value of sharing issues of concern across disciplines and there was a clear desire among participants to continue the discussions across sectors to share experience and to widen knowledge of the issues. Steps have been taken to set up a network, and the first event will take place in May 2025, with the aim of widening participation over time.
Since the meeting in October 2023, concerns about ‘machines’ and printing heritage at risk have only increased, along with overlapping concerns around the loss of heritage skills. In the context of letterpress printing, for example, this includes not only a knowledge of typesetting and other letterpress, especially in relation to industrial processes and the engineering knowledge necessary to maintain older machinery. Museum displays around printing are scattered around Scotland, at the National Museum of Scotland and the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh, in Kilmarnock, Dundee, Falkirk and as far north as Wick. Elsewhere museums have printing machinery in store. With the exception of Robert Smail’s Printing Works in Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders, very little of this machinery is used for demonstrations or workshops, despite what appears to be a growing interest in hands-on printing, and an often stated wish to have a printing museum.
In the meantime the wherabouts more machines are reported, sometimes abandoned in buildings at risk, among which are items of historic interest.
This paper will look at the developments around the printing heritage sector in Scotland over the last two years.
Georgina Grant is Curator of Technology at National Museums Scotland. She is responsible for the technology collections, which cover a wide variety of objects relating to industry, engineering and communications. Georgina was previously Senior Curator at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. During that time, she developed a particular interest in nineteenth century iron foundry production with a focus on architectural ironwork and associated trade literature. She recently completed a Headley Fellowship with Art Fund on the subject, and currently sits on the Advisory Group for the Centre for Printing History and Culture.
Dr Helen S Williams is the Honorary Edward Clark Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and has worked with Scotland’s Printing Heritage (Scottish Printing Archival Trust) since 2007. Her research interests centre on the technologies and people of the nineteenth century printing industry, and she has published a number of articles and book chapters around this. Most recently her article on ‘Printers and their libraries’ was recently published in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, and she also contributed to two volumes of the Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press.
Graciela Machado (en attente de confirmation)
Pure Print Archaeology: reconstructing techniques and territories in the European periphery
This paper explores the role of archaeological printmaking in reconstructing and transmitting historical printing techniques, highlighting its significance for contemporary artistic and research practices. My focus is on extinct and overlooked processes—such as papyrography, gillotage, in situ lithography, and zincography—investigating how traditional print methods continue to inform modern graphic technologies and historical interpretation.
The research centres on peripheral European regions, particularly Portugal, examining the evolution of printmaking outside dominant cultural hubs and its connections with architectural archives, CPF photographic collections, and beyond. Through collaborations with institutions like FIMS (Fundação Instituto Marques da Silva), I analyse how print heritage may be used to reconstruct our knowledge from the past, contribute to shaping our understanding of architectural memory and site-specific artistic production.
As a printmaker-archaeologist, my approach is rooted in the hands-on exploration of historical printmaking processes, which I also pass on to my students. This practice of combining artistic creation with archaeological investigation is key to both my teaching and artistic work. My experience at the TYPA Print Art Centre reinforced the importance of direct engagement with historical print processes, to make use and work together to actively preserve, a principle I integrate into both my pedagogical strategies and experimental printmaking projects at FBAUP, a European higher education institution with over 300 years of history and a strong tradition of academic and artistic excellence, with a historical background of invisibility regarding printmaking practices. This is particularly true for areas that intersect with typography, lithography, and other commercially oriented or reproductive techniques, which have often been marginalized despite their significant role in the institution’s artistic legacy, and are one of the focus of our investigations.
This presentation will highlight key projects developed within the Pure Print Archaeology framework, showing how reconstructing lost techniques, engaging with lithographic quarries and print workshops, and reinterpreting archival materials contribute to current discussions on print heritage. Ultimately, this research aims to bridge historical methods with artistic innovation, offering fresh perspectives on how printmaking is understood and valued in today’s cultural and academic environments.
Graciela Machado is Professora Associada com agregação
Investigadora i2ADS
web: gravura.fba.up.pt/home/investigacao
mgmachado@fba.up.pt
Laurine Sandoval
Le Centre Gutenberg et le projet AGORATRIUM
L’association Espace Européen Gutenberg, formée de professionnels et de passionnés de l’Imprimerie et des Arts graphiques, s’est donnée pour mission de sauvegarder et de mettre en valeur le patrimoine matériel et immatériel de et pour l’imprimerie, de Gutenberg à nos jours. Elle acquiert des fonds, développe des outils de médiation et mène des actions de sensibilisation aux métiers et techniques de l’Imprimerie et des Arts graphiques aux niveaux local et transfrontalier. Son ambition principale est de créer le Centre Gutenberg.
Dans une démarche visant à définir la vocation du centre et son développement, l’association est impliquée dans la mise en œuvre du projet Agoratrium, pôle territorial et campus créatif, un lieu qui a pour vocation de mutualiser des initiatives pour structurer un écosystème au service du print et des arts graphiques.
Le projet rassemble et fédère des acteurs de la filière et offre un soutien pour la collaboration, la croissance, le développement technologique et la maturation économique. Il se développe en un lieu qui rassemble une galaxie d’activités s’adressant tant aux professionnel·les qu’au grand public, Strasbourgeois·es et visiteur·euses : un parcours d’exposition valorisant l’histoire et les techniques de l’imprimerie, ainsi qu’un espace d’expositions temporaires ; une école de formation aux métiers de l’imprimerie ; un écosystème innovant composé de start-up, porteurs de projets, créatifs, chercheurs et industriels autour d’un fab lab, d’une micro-usine, de laboratoires, incubateurs, ateliers d’artistes et autres dispositifs visant à accompagner l’innovation et la créativité, et enfin, un lieu de vie ludique animé par une programmation ouverte à tou·tes.
Les objectifs : rassembler autour de l’imprimerie et des arts graphiques pour transmettre et innover :
– Accompagner les mutations vers le numérique de l’imprimerie et les arts graphiques ;
– Valoriser le secteur de l’impression et du graphisme, avec le numérique, dans l’industrie 4.0.
– Transmettre des savoirs et techniques.
– Accompagner les entreprises sur l’évolution des processus techniques et leurs projets de- recherche et développement.
– Mutualiser des compétences et des équipements.
Laurine Sandoval est directrice de l’Espace Européen Gutenberg, association dédiée à la transmission et à la valorisation du patrimoine lié à l’imprimerie et aux arts graphiques. Son parcours professionnel est marqué par une forte implication dans la mise en valeur du patrimoine culturel matériel et immatériel, et dans la médiation culturelle innovante et adaptées à une diversité de publics. Elle assure la direction stratégique, administrative et culturelle de l’établissement, tout en pilotant des projets de coopération à l’échelle régionale, nationale et européenne. Ses compétences en gestion de projets culturels s’inscrivent dans une approche transversale, alliant programmation, partenariats, recherche de financements et développement territorial.
15:00
Refreshments
15:30
Session 6 : Multidisciplinary research in printing heritage
Joost Depuydt
Research at the Museum Plantin-Moretus
Even after the 500th anniversary of its founder Christopher Plantin, the legacy and relevance of his Officina Plantiniana is still alive and kicking. Over the last years, several typographic collections of the Museum Plantin-Moretus have been the subject of research projects. From punches and matrices, through hand moulds and type cases filled with cast type, to the printing presses, they have all been studied. Either from a typographic point of view or from a conservational angle, these studies have revealed new insights into the history of the printing process. Moreover, the collections documenting the printing of illustrations, such as woodblocks and copper plates, have been digitized to make them more easily accessible, not only for researchers, but also for creative minds who give a new live to iconography from times long past. We will present an overview of some of the most striking research results to underline the extraordinary research potential of the typographic collections and printing house heritage of the Museum Plantin-Moretus. Furthermore we will stress how the iconography of the early modern period, found in the collections of printing surfaces (woodblocks and copper plates), is still an inexhaustible source for the creative industry today.
Joost Depuydt is Curator of Typography & Printing House Heritage at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp. Joost graduated as historian at the KU Leuven in 1991 and received an MA in Combined Historical Studies (The Renaissance) at the Warburg Institute in London in 1992. Between 2007 and 2018 he was Curator of Special Collections (maps, drawings, prints) at the FelixArchief / Antwerp City Archives. He has organized the 26th International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC 2015) in Antwerp. Since 2018 Joost has been in charge of the typographic collection at the Museum Plantin-Moretus, which includes punches, matrices, hand moulds, cast type, woodblocks and copper plates.
Caroline Archer-Parré and Ann-Marie Carey:
Small performances: investigating the typographic punches of John Baskerville through heritage science and practice-based research
Whilst Baskerville’s books can be found in public and private collections around the world, there is little evidence of the tools and materials of his workshop. However, a collection of more than 3,000 of Baskerville’s typographic punches designed, cut, and used in his workshop in Birmingham, have been held, since 1952, at Cambridge University Library. These punches preserve otherwise inaccessible information regarding their manufacture and use which can be unlocked through historical, scientific and craft-based research. A collaborative team of scholars from Birmingham City University and the University of Cambridge are seeing what can be discovered by a close examination of the punches and how these discoveries can be conveyed to audience in a heritage setting and beyond. Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the project is entitled ‘Small Performances: investigating the typographic punches of John Baskerville through heritage science and practice-based research’ and aims to contribute to the history of printing technology. The project investigators will provide updates on progress to date. www.baskervillepunches.org.
Caroline Archer-Parré is Professor of Typography and Co-director of the Centre for Printing History & Culture at Birmingham City University / University of Birmingham, and Chair of the Baskerville Society and Print Networks.
Ann-Marie Carey is Associate Professor in the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University
Marcos Martinon-Torres is the Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge, where he also co-leads the Cambridge Heritage Science Hub (CHERISH).
Maciej Pawlikowski is Head of the Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), which main activities are focused around providing digital content to the Cambridge Digital Library and to academic researchers.
16:30