Monday, October 10, 2011

Type Specimens: A Berlin Miscellany




While in Berlin in 2010, designer Tana Mitchell discovered an expansive collection of letterpress type in the basement of the Druckwerkstatt im Kulturwerk des BBK. Using the BBK's press she began printing, accounting for and making sense of the collection with her own somewhat arbitrary methodology. Likening her activity to that of an entomologist in the field, the BBK typographic collection became a habitat from which she gathered her speciments to make her own typography collection. In the process of making and souveniring, Mitchell created a suite of prints from A to Z, each capturing a single letter in various forms, which are being exhibited in Type Specimens: A Berlin Miscellany at Auckland's Objectspace to 12 November 2011.
Images: Tana Mitchell's print specimens and letterpress type discovered at the Druckwerkstatt in Kultuwerk des BBK, Berlin