Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 6: The Tipoteca
Exterior of the Tipoteca (the former church and the burnt orange building to its left) in Cornuda, Italy. Photograph by Alexander Trubin 2012.
A view of the Tipoteca with two iron hand presses in the foreground and a display case of restricted wood type between them. Photograph by Alexander Trubin 2012.
The Tipoteca
The Tipoteca (full name Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione) is located in Cornuda, a small town in the Veneto, roughly an hour’s drive from Venice or Padova. It is a private museum devoted to the history of printing, especially Italian printing, from the 15th century to the late 20th century. Although its holdings are not as vast as other printing museums in Europe or the United States, it is indisputably the most beautiful of them all. The Tipoteca’s strength is its enormous collection of Italian wood type.
A view of the stacks of drawers (at left and in front) holding the restricted wood type at the Tipoteca. Photograph by David Wolske 2013.
Much of the Tipoteca’s wood type collection is heavily restricted, not available for use by most of the letterpress workshops held there. These types are considered either too rare, too fragile, or the wrong height-to-paper for common use. Legacy of Letters was allowed to use a few of these restricted types during the workshops in 2015 with Alan Kitching and in 2017 with Erik Spiekermann due to the fame (and experience) of those designers.
The rare fount of script wood type that is the focus of the Letterforms Study Group workshop in June 2025 is located in the restricted zone. It is too high for use on the Vandercook-style cylinder presses that most workshops at the Tipoteca rely on. Fortunately, we have been given permission to use this type—but only on the condition that we print it on one of the Tipoteca’s hand presses and under the supervision of a master printer such as Lucio Passerini. Thus, this workshop will be a rare opportunity to work with a typeface that is normally off-limits.
Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025
The workshop will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. Participation in the workshop is limited to eight people. To secure a place a non-refundable deposit of $300 is required. Please make payment to paulshaw@nyc.rr.com via PayPal. If this is not possible, please contact Paul Shaw at paulshaw@nyc.rr.com for alternative methods of payment. A downloadable registration form is available below.
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