Type Archived: A visual journey through typographic history

The definitive account of the legendary Type Archive provides a stunning visual tour of traditional typefounding, tracing the origins of typography and the printed word

Successfully crowdfunded by 374 backers in December 2024 and now available to purchase in limited numbers

£50.00

Founded in London in 1992, the Type Archive brought together some eight million artefacts that tell the story of typography and printing. Now, for the first time, a new book by long-serving Type Archive volunteer Richard Ardagh sheds light on the organisation’s extraordinary materials, celebrating their significance and importance to both the history of art and engineering.

Type Archived presents the typographic treasures that made this possible, from the engraved punches (master letters) and matrices (dies for casting), to the letterpress type and printing presses that put ink to paper. Inside the book, these items have been arranged into chapters by material: iron, steel, copper, brass, bronze, lead, wood, and paper.

Alongside specially commissioned photography, the book features a detailed summary of the trials and achievements of the Archive, an essay on the techniques of typefounding, a glossary of terms and detailed image captions describing the objects, their designers and uses.

Specification

300 × 240mm
176 pages
Hardcover

3/4-height dust jacket

Estimated delivery

Orders will be processed and dispatched within 48 hours.

Shipping

Tracked worldwide.

Meet the author

Designer Richard Ardagh founded his eponymous studio in 2006, having graduated from Central St Martins in 2003. He is a partner of artisan letterpress print studio New North Press. As a longterm member of the Type Archive team, at the time of its closure in 2023, Ardagh helped to ‘ensure the institution’s legacy was preserved for posterity, through oral history, video, texts and an enormous catalogue of its unique artefacts’ (Eye magazine issue 106). Ardagh originally began assisting engineer Parminder Kumar Rajput in the Type Archive’s Matrix Department, eventually specialising in punchcutting.