The Ludlow Project - The international printing museum

Meet the Ludlow Typograph. The Ludlow shares much in common with another more well known linecasting machine, the Linotype. But where the Linotype excelled at quickly casting line after line of text for books, newspapers, and magazines, the Ludlow was best known for being able to set large, decorative headlines casting letters, numbers, symbols and dingbats up to 240 points. That's over three inches tall! The Ludlow's genius lies in its simplicity. Its able to create a slug, which is a single line of metal type, using molds called matrices that are set in a composing stick completely by hand. The same line of type can cast multiple times, allowing a letterpress shop to make many lines from a very small set of matrices. The brass matrices are distributed and reused very quickly, and when the slug has been printed, it can be remelted and recycled in the Ludlow's melting pot, so the printer always has fresh, perfect type to print from, without wasting any material in the process. The International Printing Museum in Carson, California holds the largest collection of printing equipment in America, emphasizing the history of letterpress printing and typecasting, from Gutenberg to Vandercook. The Museum's Ludlow collection is missing a very large number of rare fonts. The Museum's goal is to expand this collection, to give volunteers, visitors, and friends around the world access to an enormous library of hot metal typefaces. And that's where you come in! Your support will ensure that the letterpress printers around the world will have access to a living collection of letterforms. Visitors to the Museum will be able to take Ludlow classes, print with a full catalog of original Ludlow fonts, and to take home their very own Ludlow slug as a memento of their visit. letterpress printers and collectors will be able to aquire custom made Ludlow slugs for their own printing projects, using typefaces that are often unavailable on the computer. In appreciation of your support for The Ludlow Project, The Museum will be offering a very special set of Ludlow-themed rewards, and will also digitize the collection of Ludlow type specimens to make those resources available to graphic designers, typography buffs, and printing historians worldwide. The International Printing Museum needs you! Go get 'em, Tiger!