Type Consortium

Wel­come to the Type Consortium.

The aim of this site will be to gauge inter­est in, and pool resources to pur­chase let­ter­press type in quan­ti­ty from the few tra­di­tion­al type foundries still in oper­a­tion. The advan­tage will be two-fold: low­er prices for pur­chasers, more work for the foundries.

Con­trary to the opin­ion of some with vest­ed inter­est in oth­er tech­nolo­gies, it’s my belief that let­ter­press can­not be done with­out type, and specif­i­cal­ly, “foundry type”. Due to the hard­ness of the met­al amal­gam which makes up foundry type, there is the abil­i­ty to cast designs oth­er­wise unavail­able in oth­er sys­tems such as Mono­type, or the sev­er­al line cast­ing tech­nolo­gies. Fine ser­ifs, ital­ic kerns, light weights, and script designs can only be cast in hard foundry met­al, and be expect­ed to hold up to more than a sin­gle press run.

Type has always been a cap­i­tal invest­ment, and beyond that, type is cap­tured ener­gy in a world con­cerned with ener­gy usage and effi­cien­cy. Lay­ing good type in a case and treat­ing it prop­er­ly means that the cost of the mate­ri­als, and the ener­gy input to cre­ate it, is avail­able to be used and reused again.