Photo: Hjart · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Bogtrykmuseet i Esbjerg

Volunteer-run letterpress printing museum in Esbjerg with working typesetting and printing machines from more than 100 years of printing history.

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About the museum

The letterpress printing museum goes back to the initiative of the Esbjerg Typografiske Laug, an association of typesetters and printers founded by, among others, retired typographers from the newspaper Vestkysten. In 1979 the municipality made a building on Borgergade available to the guild, and in 1981 the museum opened to visitors.

The building was constructed in 1905 as a packing house for eggs and butter for export and served as a forge from the 1950s on, before the municipality acquired it at the end of the 1970s.

The museum shows the development of letterpress printing from the early 20th century until it was replaced by faster methods. The collection includes type cases and tools, more than a hundred wood and metal typefaces, and several typesetting machines, including Linotype and Intertype machines and a Typograph. Most of the equipment comes from Germany and Denmark, some from the Copenhagen machine factory Eickhoff. Many machines are still in operation and are demonstrated by the volunteers; besides book printing, the museum also covers the printing of newspapers, brochures and posters. The museum's friends' association has several hundred members.