— New for February — Border No. 1329 (9pt) & Collection No. 6 (Typographical Accessories, Including @ Symbol)
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 now offers for sale many type and border fonts, with new additions each month. You will find our 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 matrices for some 2,000 different borders and ornaments. Our holdings include most all well-known faces and a good many antique and uncommon ones. You will find a downloadable inventory of these in The Matrix Vault. Unlike the type foundries of the golden age, we will not be producing a specimen book--this would be prohibitively labor-intensive and perpetually outdated. Selected fonts and borders will be cast and promoted with specimens on this web site, 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. On-request (commissioned) castings can sometimes be worked into our schedule, depending on several variables and with a certain minimum purchase. E-mail your request and we'll certainly give it serious consideration.
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 that 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 on the Type Fonts page) and it would certainly be possible to use the type for stamping and replace it with fresh pieces from the font as they wear out.
Typecasting Matrices For Sale & Wanted
Our holdings include thousands of matrix fonts that are surplus to our needs--both 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 elements. We are always looking for any matrices not currently in our library, and will trade or purchase on generous terms.
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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: STILL ONLY EIGHT DOLLARS ($8.00) ANY ORDER! International shipments at actual cost plus insurance. We ship worldwide.
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. I've been joined in the shop by my wife Johanna, who handles the printing and packaging duties. 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
