It’s been another great year and we’ve enjoyed spending time with so many of you. In 2014, we welcomed over 200 visitors to the working museum during monthly open hours, school groups, “by appointment” visits, and special events.

Several of the region’s graphic design programs are making a museum tour part of their curriculum. Professors at Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon State University took advantage of our programming to educate students about the historical underpinnings of the type and printing craft. We saw amazing turnouts for events and tours given as part of the IPRC Printdustrial and Portland Design Week events. And we held our first author book tour reading, co-sponsored by HarperCollins Publishers, with journalist and author Alix Christie. Christie’s debut novel Gutenberg’s Apprentice tells the story of the invention of printing in medieval Germany.

We are now regularly demonstrating our hand mould, Orphan Annie sorts caster, line casters and composition caster. In 2014, we completed the restoration of our Ludlow line caster and expanded our collection Linotype magazines. To test the restoration of our Monotype Composition Caster, we completed a font for Myrna Knode at Expedition Press of Kennerly Old Style that had been partially cast at Stern & Faye, Printers, using the same machine and matrices that are now in our permanent collection. The restoration of our Thompson sorts caster continues. We’ve reached the point where we’ve gotten metal into the mold. The next step is to make the necessary adjustments for casting type.