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Fundicion Tipografica Neufville/ Bauersche Gießerei

Apr 6, ’11 1:33 PM

We’ve received an email from Wolf­gang Hart­mann, Direc­tor of Neufville/Bauer con­firm­ing that type cast­ing oper­a­tions ceased in 2008. I had know this was the case, but this is tru­ly bad news to have confirmed.

I have asked for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion as he is will­ing to pro­vide that might flesh out some kind of report on the state of cast­ers and matri­ces. This may not be infor­ma­tion he wish­es to provide.

An inven­to­ry list was pro­vid­ed of the remain­ing stock of zinc type for book­bind­ing, and met­al types in boxed form, or wrapped fonts. The list is in Span­ish, and while I have par­tial­ly inter­pret­ed mean­ing, some clar­i­ty on num­bers has been enquired about and fur­ther infor­ma­tion will be forth­com­ing. Suf­fice to say, the quan­ti­ties are bare bones with a range of sizes from around 12 — 20pt.

That stat­ed, the types are on a Didot body (not pica), and it appears, on a Euro­pean .928″ height to paper, rather than the .918″ Amer­i­can stan­dard. I have enquired about milling to height.

See the com­ments for addi­tion­al information.

Comments (3)

Printing From Things, Not Pictures Of Things

Feb 6, ’11 6:13 PM

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.

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Comments (15)