Eye Magazine

The English type industry began to decline in the 1960s as offset printing and photocomposition challenged traditional typemaking methods. The three pillars of the industry – typefounders Stephenson, Blake & Co., the Monotype Corporation and wood manufacturers Robert DeLittle of York – all collapsed in the 1990s. The first to go was the Monotype Corporation in 1992. Its demise galvanised book designer and publisher Susan Shaw (or Sue, as she was known to everyone) into proposing the creation of a museum to save Monotype’s ‘heritage’, a mix of archival material and physical equipment. This became the germ of the Type Archive which subsequently acquired similar material from Stephenson, Blake & Co. and Robert DeLittle. The three collections were combined as the National Typefounding Collection.

Shaw found a Victorian industrial site in London’s Lambeth to house the collection (and the archives of her friend Berthold Wolpe, noted book jacket designer and type designer). At one time the site had served as a hospital for sick circus animals, including baby elephants …