HMCT Creative Director Simon Johnston—renowned graphic designer, typographer, and long-time professor at ArtCenter—is also a dedicated letterpress printer. Here he shares a diary of his recent trip to the famed Tipoteca Foundation.
About two hours north of Venice, in the town of Cornuda, where the Tipoteca Italia Foundation is situated, canals are still very much in evidence. The water in the main Brentella canal running through town flows at a pretty good pace (in fact a fast walking pace—I tested it) and was used to generate electricity for the adjacent industrial complex called Canapificio Veneto, inaugurated in 1883. It is in these industrial buildings, a former hemp rope factory, as well as an adjacent former church, that Tipoteca Foundation is housed. Tipoteca, a privately funded non-profit foundation, is simultaneously a printing and typography museum with working presses, an archive of letterpress typefaces and technologies, an educational facility, and a conference and exhibition space. That relatively bland description does not do justice to this spectacular venue, which must be the most well-equipped and enjoyable typographic/letterpress printing facility I have ever seen.
Last year I was able to visit Tipoteca via Venice to make some prints for a series I had been working on, as I was keen to use some of the particular Italian typefaces they have in their extensive collection, specifically some of the early modernist 1930s fonts from the Nebiolo foundry, such as Razionale and Hastile, as well as later gems such as Aldo Novarese’s Eurostile. To be able to actually use and print with such historical materials is a true privilege. Tipoteca holds regular group workshops and demonstrations but also offers the possibility of working individually with the assistance of a press expert. In my case, it was a real pleasure to work with Daniele Facchin, an experienced and inventive pressman, with whom I completed three prints over the course of three days, including a large one in Eurostile lowercase in three parts.
Daniele’s son Leonardo Facchin and his colleague Sandro Berra direct and supervise the operations of Tipoteca on a daily basis and were gracious hosts, even allowing me to inflict my clumsy Italian on them. Leonardo gave me a full tour of the impressive facilities, which include, in no particular order: a huge collection of Italian typefaces in meticulously designed drawers; printing presses both for use and display, including operational hot metal linotype machines; museum displays of typeface history and related print materials; a shop selling books and prints; a large conference/exhibition/performance space. In addition to these facilities open to the public, Leonardo also showed me the warehouse spaces adjacent to the museum not open to the public, where they have an astonishing collection of type and presses collected from all over the country undergoing sorting and refurbishment, a Sisyphean task by the looks of it.
For anyone with an interest in letterpress printing and typographic history, this oasis of culture and civilization dedicated to the printed word is essential viewing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. And if you are not in the neighborhood but are interested, there is an excellent book available about Tipoteca produced in 2006, beautifully designed by Simon Esterson. But if you do manage to visit, be sure to go to the adjacent Ristorante Le Corderie for lunch. Buonissimo!
