A special session during October’s NSW ‘rare book week’ provides a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in print history and try setting type, letter by letter.

The Penrith Museum of Printing event in cooperation with the NSW State Library’s Rare Book Week includes a free two-hour session on Tuesday October 21 (1.30-3.30pm) but you are advised to book.

As part of the week’s events across multiple sites, the print museum will host three speakers covering the time between the invention of printing and the present – how fonts were created, the impact of the Linotype machine and the evolution of book structures. Even the development of uniquely Australian-New Zealand typefaces such as Sydney Gothic, Kograh, Ballarat condensed and Christchurch bold.

As a working museum with Linotype and letterpress machines, expert presentations will be followed by live demonstrations of these processes and much more.

Beautiful facsimiles of the Gutenberg 42-line Bible and the illuminations with hidden secrets will be revealed. There will also be an early 1916 edition of one of Australia’s top-selling books, CJ Dennis’ ‘Songs of a Sentimental Bloke’, the first print run of which was only 2,500. Examples of box wood engravings and historical books and newspapers will also be on display.

With attendee numbers strictly limited due to space and safety constraints, booking is recommended, by phone on 0408 412 708 or by email to the museum’s president, ralockley07@gmail.com

The invention of Gutenberg's printing press, using moveable type, almost 600 years ago, launched a whole new industry of typography – typeface design. The earliest typefaces, moulded and cut by Gutenberg himself, were in the Gothic style to mimic the hand-letters of scribes.

As printing spread around Europe, first to Italy and then to Holland and England, new-look typefaces improved legibility and popular appeal as literacy grew with the Renaissance. The Italian influence favoured Roman typefaces, as carved into Trajan’s column for example. Thus was the genesis of Roman typefaces, later to be adapted in France by Claude Garamond, in England by Caslon and John Baskerville and later still as the famed Times New Roman.

Before long there was an explosion of typefaces and type design and foundries became a huge industry with names familiar to us today – Sabon, Baskerville, Bodoni, Clarendon, Perpetua and hundreds more, all set into lines by hand compositors. Remarkably, all these typefaces are on almost every computer on the planet, as type choices in MS Word for example.

Around 1884, the invention of the Linotype and, later, Monotype revolutionised print production and the evolution of book and newspaper structures. Mass media was born.

Pictured: the museum interior and (below) the Gutenberg bible facsimile