The foundry itself is ran out of Sky's house. One garage is dedicated to his antique presses, while the other has the machinery to create new type. While we were there, we got to experience how the presses and other machines worked, not just my watching but actually running them ourselves. It was a great hands on experience that allowed us to appreciate a craft that is away from the computer. We were also indulged in the amazing history of type itself. Getting to hear stories as well as see and run the actual presses definitely exceeds the experience of just reading about it from a textbook. Overall it was an amazing experience and I encourage everyone to go and visit whether type is your thing or not.
I took some pictures at the foundry from my phone. They aren't the best quality but in some ways they still capture why this trip was so amazing.
Oh wow, I didn't know Prescott had a type foundry, and I live in the town next to it! Haha. But it's great to hear that you and a few students got a chance to get some hands on experience (even if just a little bit) with managing the press machine. I'm not that into type, but I'm sure it was pretty cool to go to an actual type foundry and look at how things are manually done, like you said without it being on the computer or learning from a textbook. I kind of wish classes would do field trips to places like these in order to expose students to the things outside of a classroom. I think it would be interesting to see how things are actually made in the set environment, and it could be beneficial to the course learning, in my opinion. Anyway, this was a cool blog, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, I wish we learned more about this in our design history classes. Gawd, that huge machine and effort just for prints; glad we don't have to do this in our classes. I would like to learn the process of the making prints with these, It sounded like you had fun. Now I want to experience this. Very nice! :)
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