New for June: Fournier le Jeune & Sans Serif Light Italic Now View Type Specimens Sequentially Using >> Button!
* * * * * * *
The very word is enough to put a smile on the face of any letterpress printer. Ever since Johann Gutenberg and his associates began hand-casting individual metal letters half a millenium ago, the craft of typefounding has gone hand-in-hand with the Black Art of printing. With letterpress now enjoying an exhuberant revival among fine printers, artists, and hobbyists, where can a printer go to get type? Where is the corresponding revival in typecasting? It is here at Skyline Type Foundry. We know type, we use type, and we love type.
Skyline opened in June, 2004, and is proudly carrying forward the ancient and honorable craft of making metal printing type. We are both proud and humbled to be the de facto successors to multiple type foundries of historic note: included in our matrix library are fonts with the identifying markings of Perfection, Triangle, Neon, Empire, Castcraft, and Missouri-Central foundries.
Skyline is now casting and offering for sale selected type and border fonts on a modest scale. Much labor yet remains to be done in the repair and restoration of the vintage typecasting machinery to good operating condition. In due time, Skyline will be operating at full potential and able to offer a wide range of type and decorative borders. You will find Skyline type to be reasonably priced, because we want to preserve and promote letterpress printing.
We are fortunate to have brought together nearly 10,000 fonts of matrices from which to cast type, ranging from 6 to 48 point, and some 1900 different borders and ornaments. Our holdings include most all well-known faces and a good many antique and uncommon ones. You will find inventories of these in The Matrix Vault. Unlike the type foundries of the golden age, we will neither be producing a specimen book nor casting numerous type faces for an extensive on-hand inventory--this would be prohibitively labor-intensive. Selected fonts and borders will be cast and promoted with specimens on this web site, in Letterpress periodicals, and in the monthly bundle of the Amalgamated Printers Association.
Available Type and Custom Castings
Fonts and borders that we have already cast, and are on the shelf for immediate shipping, are shown on the Type Fonts and Border Fonts pages. New items are steadily added as more castings are done. Due to engineering work to further develop the foundry capabilities, and several current commissions, custom casting orders are not presently being taken. As more equipment is up and running, our availability for this will be resumed.
Will Skyline Type work for Hot Foil Stamping? The short answer is, "Yes, but." It is not represented or sold as stamping type. Physically it will work—that is, it will fit and function in your foil stamping machine. However, true foil stamping type is necessarily made of a harder substance (brass or zinc) to resist the heat and pressure inherent in that process. Lead alloy printing type will smash down and deform over time and use. Another possible issue is the "depth of drive", which is the dimension by which the face of the type is raised above the body. This dimension is normally larger in stamping type to prevent interference of the body when stamping soft materials like leather. All of that said, a regular font of printing type contains many of each character (see the Font Scheme Chart download) and it would certainly be possible to use the type until it begins to deteriorate, then replace it with more from the font.
Typecasting Matrices For Sale
Our holdings include over 7,000 matrix fonts that are surplus to our needs--cellular, display and Giant--and these are available for sale or trade to other typecasters or collectors of printing memorabilia. See The Matrix Vault for a list of these fonts. (Contact us for prices.) We also have some 3000 duplicate border and ornament matrices. These mats are presently reserved for trade only; we will swap on favorable terms to acquire any we don't have.
Printing Collector's Items
Click to Enlarge
Megill's Gauge Pin Cup (Antique Reproduction)
This little collector's item is so rare, and so cool, that we have (at some great expense) put them back in production. It's a little cast iron cup, 2-1/2" x 4". There's an ear with a screw hole, and it mounts on the bottom side of the feed board of your press, pivoting in or out, and holds your gauge pins and other small items. Inside the cup are cast the words FOR MEGILL'S GAUGE PINS. Every press needs one! We'll have to sell a zillion to break even.
Price $20.00
Shooting Stick (Antique Reproduction)
You do know what a shooting stick is, don't you? Well, if not, here's where you can find out! Back when quoins were just simple wooden wedges, not store-bought mechanical things, the old country printer would lock up his form in the chase by applying a mallet and a shooting stick--also known as a "persuader." This reproduction was created by the late John Hern of Idaho, who manufactured them at his Iron Works. It is patterned after the above stick in the 1906 Specimen Book of American Type Founders. Cast iron; length 7". Price $15.00
* * * * *
How to Place an Order or Contact Us
There's no highfalutin little cyber shopping cart on this site, you'll have to order the old fashioned way:
1. Click on Order Form in page menu, print off the sheet, and fill in your order.
2. FLAT RATE U.S. SHIPPING: EIGHT DOLLARS ($8.00) ANY ORDER! International shipments at actual cost plus insurance.
3. Include a check to cover the total plus shipping, and mail your order to us. 4. Thank You!
Skyline Type Foundry P. O. Box 5 Highway 96 Mile Six Kampsville, IL 62053
That's me, Schuyler (Sky) Shipley, Chief Engineer. I do all the other jobs too. I collect, restore and operate antique presses. I've been involved with type and letterpress printing since 1962, at the age of 8--and now, more recently, typecasting. Skyline Type Foundry has been an exciting and rewarding endeavor. Lead is not dead--it's alive and well on the west coast of Illinois!
MEMBER
American Typecasting Fellowship Amalgamated Printers Association (APA 578) Society of Quasi-United Itinerant Repair and Restoration Engineers for LinecasterS American Amateur Press Association St. Louis Letterpress Society
