KIRKCUDBRIGHT VINTAGE PRINTWORKS

What's in our collections?

The press room at the Vintage Printworks.

A few of the presses we use.

Printing Presses

You will find a fine collection of printing presses including a wooden paper making press from around c.1650, a Cropper treadle press from c.1870, a galley press from c.1860, a paper cutting press from c.1895 and a couple of Albion presses. We also have a few book presses and some smaller Adana home printing presses.

It's important to note that we are a working printworks and all of the equipment that we own is used for printing with. Some things are awaiting restoration but otherwise items have to earn their space in our press room. Whilst they are items of some beauty these are living functional machines that still do the work they were built for.


The Case Room at the Vintage Printworks

We keep our type in vintage cabinets and cases.

Cabinets and Cases

Letterpress cases are quite numerous and well built. They are desirable to those who are not printers thanks to the trend of hanging them on the wall to display mementos and knick knacks. We use them to store type and these cases need to be stored in cabinets known as frames. The frames are harder to find but we do have some lovely examples including an 1870s Miller and Richard composing cabinet.

Keeping these vintage cases, frames and cabinets is not a simple process. They are all of a certain vintage and subject to wear and tear, decay, mold, woodworm and other insects. All of our wooden items are treated against mold and infestation an we inspect them on a regular basis.



A variety of tools for tyesetting

Our composing stone.

Compositor's Tools

To set type you need a quantity of composing tools. These include composing sticks, composing rules, spaces and leading, furniture, mallets and planers, line gauges, slug cutters, quoins and quoin keys, the list goes on.

We need to keep a good supply of everything for when we do workshops and we try to ensure we have standard sizes that are useful for printing at ISO paper sizes. We try not to cut or modify anything as we treat all letterpress equipment as working artefacts.





Chatsworth Wooden Font

Wooden Typefaces need particular care.

Wooden Typefaces

The wooden typeface collection is always expanding. The wooden type is beautiful and everyone who visits can appreciate this part of the collection. As with cases and cabinets we inspect the wooden type often for damage and infestation.

Wooden type is generally the larger letters, point sizes above 72pt, where metal type would be too heavy to work with. As they are larger letters you find more poster, headline and display typefaces here.

As with everything else at the printworks our type is in use by us and for workshops. Printing with vintage wooden type also requires some care. We use soft ink rollers that apply ink evenly and usually only use wooden type in a proofing press with a rubber roller. This helps to reduce the amount of compression of the wood fibres. 

Metal fonts in a drawer

Metal type is kept in sturdy type cabinets

Metal Typefaces

As mentioned above metal typefaces are generally 72pt and under. We keep a good collection of metal type also with many historical typefaces such as Fraktur, Bradley, Abbey, Chatsworth, Cheltenham, Satanik etc.

Metal typefaces are heavy as the metal used is an alloy, most commonly, of lead, tin and antimony. Metal type has some toxicity risks but can be handled safely with simple precautions.





© Copyright 2025 - 2026 Phil Robinson - All Rights Reserved

The Vintage Printworks is operated for the benefit of the local community and funds and supports many community projects.