What's your type?

Over the last two years I've acquired a very large amount of type. Each time I bought a press or other piece of equipment, I always ended up walking away with the seller's entire collection. Sometimes, I scored some great things. Sometimes, I ended up with some crazy stuff.



I have finally exhausted all excuses for procrastinating, and I am at the point where I must start to sort, organize, and identify all the type I have. I've already gone through about 25 cases of type that--because for one reason or another were of no use to other printers--were sacrificed to the Type Gods and sent to a friend of my dad's to recycle.

Now I'm left with roughly 30 or so fonts. Some I've already placed neatly into type cases, where they await identification.



Others, fortunately, are still in their original packaging, which very conveniently tells me what they are.







But then I have these. I inherited four of these when I bought my big press last summer. The guy I bought the press from used to do small printing jobs, mostly small catalogs and community newspapers, to help pay for his school. He'd put together the classified ad for a particular company and then place it for safekeeping on this metal tray, known as a galley. When he left for school, he left everything just as it was. And there it sat. For thirty-five years.



Although this is a great way to introduce people to the tedious nature of using type for letterpress printing (can you imagine setting each letter and each piece of spacing material in place one by one, by hand?), it is a pain in my rear to place all these stragglers back in their proper home.



I already did this with two galleys, and then was horrified to recently uncover two more that I forgot about. But these will have to wait for a rainy day. A really rainy day. Or a week of consecutive rainy days...