The cabinet, and what is in it

The type cabinet at Brabant Letterpress was a single 36-drawer oak cabinet, two metres tall, that stood against the north wall of the loft. It was not custom-made; it had been salvaged from a closed print shop in Roermond around 1962 and lived in three subsequent shops before I bought it in 2015. The cabinet has, over the years, held eight different type families. What follows is the inventory at the moment the workshop closed.

Caslon Old Face — 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, 36, 48 pt

Cast at the Stephenson Blake foundry in Sheffield, before the foundry closed in 2004. My set was bought used from a printer in Edinburgh who was retiring. The 6 pt is rare and the 96 pt does not exist in this run; the smallest I have is 6 pt and the largest is 48 pt. The full Caslon is the family I used for most of the broadsides, its proportions are the proportions one expects in a Brabant folklore broadside.

Bembo — 10, 12, 14, 18, 24 pt

Cast at the Monotype Corporation, mostly between 1959 and 1968, in the runs prior to the Monotype reformulation. My set was bought as a single lot from a Belgian printer in 2018. Bembo is the family I used for poetry; its lighter colour and slightly Italian feel suited the verse-broadsides more than Caslon.

Bodoni — 12, 18, 24, 36, 60 pt

An incomplete set, mostly hand-set in the larger sizes for headlines. Sourced from three separate small print shops in the Netherlands and Belgium between 2017 and 2021. The 60 pt is a single drawer's worth, about thirty letters per case, and was used for the almanack headlines.

Garamond, Gotisch, and wood type

A Stempel Garamond cut in 10/12/14 pt (Stempel foundry, 1950s) for chapbook interiors when I wanted something quieter than Caslon. A Schwabacher Gotisch cut in 18/24/36 pt (cast in Germany in the 1930s) used sparingly for ornamental titling and for the Reuzen van Lieshout broadside. Two boxes of 19th-century American wood type in display sizes from 6 line to 12 line, bought as a single lot from an estate sale in Antwerp, used for posters and ornamental elements.

What the cabinet did not hold

The cabinet did not hold any digital type, any photopolymer plates (those lived in a separate drawer under the Vandercook), or any modern reproduction type. It held metal type, hand-cast or machine-cast, between 1900 and 1970. Everything in it was older than the youngest person who has ever worked at a press in the workshop, and most of it was older than the loft itself.

Where it has gone

The cabinet was the last thing to leave the loft. It went to the same printer in Antwerp who bought the Heidelberg. The eight families inside it, every drawer of every case, went with it. He has space for it; he intends to print with it; he has been instructed that I will visit unannounced and look pointedly at the inventory. He has agreed to this.