Summer 2024
Archiving the archive
When the Type Archive left its London premises, its vast collection was disbanded and its working Monotype hot-metal plant moved to the National Collections Centre. Two long-serving volunteers talk to Eye about the challenges they faced and how the history of the Archive is now being preserved. Photographs by Philip Sayer
When the Type Archive in London was obliged to close, volunteers Sallie Morris and Richard Ardagh were on hand to ensure the institution’s legacy was preserved for posterity, through oral history, video, texts and an enormous catalogue of its unique artefacts, now in storage. The former circus elephant ‘hotel’ held a vast quantity of machines and materials that Type Archive founder Sue Shaw and fellow trustees saved after the hot-metal type division of the Monotype Corporation went into administration in 1992. Examples of each machine in the Monotype production line were transported from the village of Salfords in Surrey to Stockwell in October 1995 in what was known as ‘Operation Hannibal’. The equipment, a full industrial process that included casters, keyboards, irreplaceable letter patterns and unique matrix-making machinery, in total weighed as much as 139 elephants. Punches, matrices, charts and records were also preserved. The operation required two ten-ton lorries a day for seven weeks. The Salfords site, once the workplace of thousands, was later bulldozed.
A 0.4 inch Monotype matrix for large composition casting in the hands of Parminder Kumar Rajput at the Type Archive in Stockwell, South London. Above. Matrix engineer and punchcutter Parminder Kumar Rajput, who trained at the Monotype Works in 1965, eventually – and uniquely – becoming proficient in the many stages of matrix production.
A small group of skilled ex-Monotype staff, including punchcutter Parminder Kumar Rajput, precision tool-maker Doug Ellis and manager Duncan Avery started a new company on the Type Archive premises: Monotype Hot Metal Ltd. From 1996 until 2023 the team continued to service orders from customers – many in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent – who relied upon Monotype equipment, spares, matrices and type to typeset for letterpress printing.
This crank press was used for striking 0.2 inch matrices, one of the more than a hundred working machines in the Monotype Collection. The engraved end of a hardened steel punch is driven into a softer brass blank matrix with a pressure of twenty tonnes. The punch leaves its impression in the matrix, from which type can be cast.
In 1996 the Archive rescued materials from Sheffield foundry Stephenson Blake, which included artefacts dating back to the sixteenth century, and the Robert DeLittle woodletter collection from York, plus private donations, such as the Desmond Jeffery collection (see Eye 90). This invaluable research resource became the National Typefounding Collection, comprising eight million artefacts.
For many years, thanks to the energy of Shaw, a small team of ex-Monotype employees and countless volunteers, the Type Archive continued as a charitable trust with a government grant from the DCMS. Though Shaw was able to welcome visitors from around the world by appointment, she never achieved her dream of converting the Stockwell buildings into a living, ‘working educational museum’, open to all. Shaw died in 2020, and in 2023 the Type Archive relinquished its premises in Stockwell and the Monotype Collection was returned to the Science Museum Group to be housed in its National Collections Centre in Wiltshire.
A series of short films commissioned by the Science Museum tell the story of the Type Archive’s Monotype collection and its significance for mass communication and culture, including archive footage of Shaw.
Eye talked to Sallie Morris and Richard Ardagh about the Type Archive.
When did you first meet Sue Shaw and become involved in the Type Archive?
Sallie Morris: I met her in 2012 at an Edward Johnston seminar. I was studying the design and manufacture of Monotype typefaces in the hot-metal era at the University of Reading and I said, ‘I’d like to come to the Type Archive.’ She replied, ‘I bet you would … But we can’t have people coming who aren’t prepared to contribute something in return.’
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Richard: I began assisting Parminder Kumar Rajput and eventually specialised in punchcutting as well as matrix- making because we had this Hungry Dutch project [completed in 2019]. It was the first new font for hot-metal casting in 40 years, a commission from Russell Maret, a US book artist. It was the first time that a digitally designed font had been translated into physical patterns, punches, matrices, type and it went through the Monotype process and was given a Monotype series number.
Did the Type Archive have to close?
Richard: A significant amount of time and effort was spent by a small but dedicated team to find a way for the Type Archive to continue, whether joining or collaborating with other institutions or finding alternative premises, none of which was successful. But it was certainly explored heavily. And then Covid-19 came, which was an additional challenge.
And you ran out of options and of time?
Sallie: Yes, there was a lot of pressure …
Has most of the equipment gone into storage?
Sallie: The entire Monotype Collection was assessed, barcoded and packed carefully by the Science Museum over the course of 2023. It was transported to the National Collections Centre in Wiltshire. The entire Stephenson Blake collection resides in the same place, as the Science Museum is looking after it for V&A. So yes, the bulk of the material is in storage for now, but there are plans for this not to always be the case.
Because the Stephenson Blake collection was a separate acquisition?
Richard: Right. The contents of the Stephenson Blake typefoundry came from Sheffield in 1996, underwritten by the V&A.
Is the DeLittle material going elsewhere?
Sallie: During late 2022 and for much of 2023, the Type Archive had a DeLittle exhibition in York in association with University of York, with exhibits that included the original DeLittle office, a pantograph and the handcart for transporting type.
Richard: Surplus seasoned wood blocks went to Mark McKellier, who continues the craft of making woodletter.
How did you go about collecting the oral history of the Archive and the workplace memories of ex-Monotype employees?
Richard: We already had firsthand knowledge of being here and talking to them ourselves, but in terms of recorded documentation, as part of making the Science Museum films, we interviewed each person at length [Nicolas Barker, Duncan Avery, Parminder Kumar Rajput, Doug Ellis, Bob Richardson]. Only snippets are used in the final films, but we do have the interviews as separate films which are almost a third film in themselves. There’s one about the history of the Monotype hot-metal technology; one about the process of taking the drawing through to the printed form; and the individual interviews.
Many people have been involved with the Type Archive over the years. Phil Cleaver did a lot of the promotional work, and then Ian Chilvers. And Eiichi Kono took Sue Shaw to Japan. Several substantial donations from Japanese tech firms and paper companies enabled the Archive to open in the first place. We have a long list of donors, everyone from the Getty Foundation to …
Sallie: Toyota.
Richard: Which was fantastic. But it almost made it more difficult to save the Archive when more funds were needed, year on year. It was a huge struggle. And given that Sue was in her eighties, to still have that drive and to continue pushing for a centre of excellence … It baffles me that we don’t have a proper museum of printing and typography in this country. The impact of the printed word on the whole spectrum of society is huge. If you go to Germany or Italy or France or anywhere, they’ve got several museums, but none here.
Sallie: We also know just how much Sue had to do with the day-to-day drudgery, trying to run a site this big. Someone still had to look after the alarms and the things going wrong in a building this old.
Richard: But it was her life.
Sallie: Pretty much every time I came to the Type Archive, we had visitors who came to see Sue and the place by arrangement. We have records. Looking back to the mid-2000s, there are ring binders several inches thick with just a few months’ worth of visitor feedback forms. There were whole years where there was a Wednesday open day every week, and people were able to turn up by appointment, plus big groups.
Richard: And teaching children printing … Funds had been provided to save the collections and to get them here, but there was no money available to make it a publicly accessible space. Over the years various schemes were proposed, to the point of architectural plans being drawn for how to convert this site and install wheelchair ramps – everyone who visited could see the enormous potential.
Has your understanding of type changed from working so closely with the Type Archive collection?
Sallie: I have learnt so much from being part of a team where we have a shared passion for type design, typefounding and the Monotype hot-metal process in particular. Trying to help independent and academic researchers has resulted in me discovering artefacts and information that is new to me, such as about specific Latin type designs or non-Latin scripts. My work with the Science Museum since 2019 has required learning about the contents of the Monotype Collection in a new level of detail, for the purpose of accurate descriptions in the online catalogue.
Here you were able to see the machinery behind the matrix, the keyboard and the caster. You could see the matrices, the patterns and the punches … as well as the machines that make them.
Richard: It is a bit of a ‘rabbit hole’. I studied graphic design and then became interested in letterpress printing. And the further I got into that, the more I was gripped by the history and the origins of things. But not having access to the tools of the industry was a block until I came here. Because Duncan and Kumar and Doug were engineers, they talked in numbers: If I said Baskerville, they might know what I meant, but if I said ‘series 169’, that was their language!
Kumar is amazing because he also has this exceptional level of patience. A machine would stop working and we might spend all afternoon trying to fix it, but the following week he would come in and say, ‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ and within a few minutes it would be working again. He had almost 60 years of experience to draw on. He came to the country in 1965 and almost immediately got a job in Monotype, and for the rest of his career worked with these machines. You don’t meet people like that anymore; it’s specialism to such a high degree.
As well as being an ‘apprentice’ learning under Kumar, I gradually gained Sue’s trust and was able to hunt around more, going through the Stephenson Blake archive and digging into its history. I feel enormously privileged to have seen so much. Although it was all volunteering, it was like doing postgrad research, but in physical form; through making rather than just reading.
Printing has existed for more than 500 years. For the majority of that time there is no documentation. You had to be shown, and learn these things physically, paying attention to the feel and sounds of materials and processes. So to feel part of that lineage only deepens my respect for the engineering minds who changed the world through these inventions.
First published in Eye no. 106 vol. 27, 2024
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