we ended our week with a little over nighter. Saturday we drove to my hometown to my niece's graduation party. After than we drove to Manitowoc, WI. We got there just before sunset and dipped our toes in Lake Michigan. The next morning we drove a couples miles to Two Rivers to see the...

Hamilton Type Museum (photo from their website). In the 1880s this then 4 story building was one of the 3 companies that made wood type for letterpress printing. Stephanie Carpenter the Assistant Director gave us a very informative 1.5 hour tour.

This is a section of the Guinness Book of Record's Longest Wall of Type.

The number 2 is their largest piece of type. It is in 2 pieces and it takes 4 people to print it.

Matthew Carter is working with Hamilton and is designing a typeface for them. This is a 2 color font. The black is one and the red is the other color. He will design on a computer and they will print the letters and then trace and cut them from the wood.

I was crazy about these beautiful wooden curves.

And all of these drawers. So many drawers, so hot, so little time.

Here is an old linotype machine. While they only ever made wood type this was still very interesting to see there. On my second job this is how type was set. They would set the metal type and pull a proof and I would paste that up. I know, way back in the olden days. This was even obsolete at that point in time.

This little press would be sweet in my office.

I enjoyed every minute of being there. If I lived in Two Rivers I would volunteer there because it is such a wonderful place to be. They have barrels of donated wood type that needs sorting. I would volunteer to sort the barrel of punctuation and try and figure out what font it would go with.

Since I could not do that I settled for a t-shirt and a poster and we headed out for home. If you are in the Two Rivers, WI area I would not miss this.