Between technology and art - Experience type casting, type setting and printing processes first-hand

In today’s information society, museums act as knowledge repositories and thus form a bridge between history and the present day. This is certainly true of the Leipzig Museum of the Printing Arts, where the production of print media can be experienced with all the senses.

A very special experience awaits those who are able to visit the Museum of the Printing Arts in Leipzig. By combining a working print shop and a museum, it provides a close-up view of five hundred years of printing history. In this unique setting, around 100 working machines and presses demonstrate the techniques of copperplate printing, lithography and letterpress. The museum’s four floors are devoted to manual and mechanical typesetting and the various printing processes. A type foundry in full working order shows visitors how lead type is cast either by hand or by machine – a genuine rarity.

Visitors become acquainted with the ‘black art’, as printing has always been known, which is vividly brought to life in this ‘hands-on’ museum whose motto is “see, smell and touch”. Guided by the specialist staff, visitors can set lines of text themselves or have various motifs printed on the platen presses as they tour the exhibition. In addition to printing machines, the Leipzig Museum of the Printing Arts has some forty tons of lead type, matrices and steel dies in its collection, for a wide variety of typefaces of European and oriental origin. It also houses a fully equipped bindery where books can be bound by hand.