Recently I've been visiting the beautiful city of Den Haag. The weather was great, so I spent most of the time exploring the city and taking pictures:)
While walking through the city center I've noticed these letterpress printed posters hanging in almost every book store. By taking a closer look I discovered that it was a recent work by studio Spacebar and was printed by Typique in Amsterdam. It is wonderful to see this technique is used by contemporary designers.
The next day I visited the Meermanno museum. The temporary exhibition 'Leestekens' about words and images curated by Joke van Leeuwen was quite playfull. The range of displayed book was quite broad: from series of experimental ABC books to pieces from the museum collection, as work by Paul van Ostaijen and "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers" from 1751-1772 with a spread page showing Armenian alphabet.
In the next hall I found "Bibliotheca Thurkowiana Minor" - the miniature library founded by Guus and Luce Thurkow wich is recently became part of the collection. The library contains 1,515 miniature books. From 1984 to 2003 Luce and Guus Thurkow run, under the name 'The Catharijne Press' an antiquarian bookselling and publishing company of miniature books. On 1 January 2001 they decided to build a library of miniature books on the example of famous 17th-and 18th-century Dutch dolls. Based on the maximum size of a miniature book of 3 inches or 76 mm size was chosen as a scale of 1 to 4. Quite impessive.
The exhibition "Van lood to led" ("from lead to led") was my favorite. In a relatively small hall this exhibition provides a comprehensive look on the history and development of the book production from 1850 until now: from printing using "lead" movable type to "led" - e-boos etc. The museum collection best piece where on display: books from Kelmscott Press by William Morris, works by Piet Zwart and Irma Boom. In the center of the hall was an interactive installation with short movies and a comfortable sofa, so I spent quite some time there:) Beside the photos and videos there where various books available for reading, as for instance "Over lood, ossegal en drukkersverdriet" by Leon van Velzen and "Letterlust" by Kees van Kooten and Ewald Spieker.
you might also like
"They are Giants" short documentary about "Bibliotheca Thurkowiana Minor" by Koert Davidse, 2010 (English subtitles)
"Van Lood tot Led" video (Dutch spoken)
Graphic Design Museum, Breda
Museum of Historical Printing, Maastricht
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