On this first episode in the new run in 2021, please welcome Jim Moran, the master printer and collections officer at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Hamilton is a unique institution in all sorts of ways. It preserves the manufacturing history and remaining wood type assets of the historical Hamilton Wood Type Company, the dominant producer of wood type in America from the late 1800s through the 1990s.
But itās a lot more. Hamilton perpetuates the knowledge of the past by being an active printing museum. Volunteers cut wood the old-fashioned way and train apprentices. Hamilton has commissioned the design of new wood faces that can then be produced with vintage equipment, but also in conjunction with P22 Type Foundry releases versions of historic faces from their collection and newly made ones in digital form.
The museum has also expanded its collection by acquiring massive collections of hand-carved billboard and poster pieces from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Itās also acquired a lot more wood type than it started with, having the largest collection of wood type in the world.
Jim and other staff members, board members, affiliated friends, volunteers, and workshop participants print with historic type on historic presses. Each November for the last decade-plus, hundreds of people gather for the Hamilton Wayzgoose, the traditional name for the annual dinner a printing shop would have to celebrate its apprentices moving up. In 2020, that gatherings was virtualāthe Awayzgooseābut it went on.
Over the pandemic year of 2020, Hamilton reached out to its community and immediately started up the Hamilton Hangs, informal gatherings via Zoom that started around no topic in particular, and quickly shifted to feature printers and artists from around the world. Thousands of attendees across the more than 50 Hangs so far include old friends of the museum and people who might never be able to get to Two Rivers, but have discovered the joy of letterpress, history, and community online.
Jim talks about his background, returning to his printing roots, and making lemonade during a year that might seem fallow of lemons.
