The Monotype Company designed and built its machines (Composition Caster and Sorts Caster) to produce type that was intended to be used once, and then remelted, and the specified metal alloy is a softer one than that used for true foundry type. This question comes our way regularly from customers. Selected fonts and borders will be cast and promoted with specimens here on this website, and by notices posted to various Letterpress Printing online forums, Briar Press, and in the monthly bundle of the Amalgamated Printers Association. You will find a downloadable inventory of these in The Matrix Vault. Our holdings include almost all well-known faces and a good many antique and uncommon ones. We are fortunate to have brought together over 3,000 fonts of matrices from which to cast type, ranging from 6 to 48 point, and matrices for some 3,500 different borders and ornaments. You will find our type to be reasonably priced, because we want to preserve and promote letterpress printing, and keep new type within the reach of all printers. Skyline now offers for sale many type and border fonts, with new additions each month. And in 2010 we were fortunate enough to acquire the complete matrix collection of the late Charles Broad’s famous Typefounders of Phoenix, consisting of over 50 revivals of 19th century type faces. We are both proud and humbled to be the de facto successors to multiple type foundries of historic note: included in our matrix library are fonts made and/or previously owned by American Type Founders, Perfection, Triangle, Neon, Empire, King, Stephenson-Blake, Detroit, Barco, Castcraft, Missouri-Central, Quaker City, and Los Angeles Type Foundries. Skyline opened in June, 2004, and is proudly carrying forward the ancient and esoteric craft of making metal printing type. All on the Skyline crew are competent letterpress printers, with combined experience of over 63 years, and together we own some 28 presses (11 of which are in the Skyline pressroom) and several thousand fonts of type. We know type, we use type, and we love type. With letterpress now enjoying an exuberant revival among fine printers, artists, and hobbyists, where can a printer go to get type? Where is the corresponding revival in typecasting? It’s here at Skyline Type Foundry, LLC. Ever since Johann Gutenberg and his associates began hand-casting individual metal letters half a millennium ago, the craft of typefounding has gone hand-in-hand with the Black Art of printing. Combining modern CNC cutting technology with traditional methods (including a restored 1960’s Funditor printer’s table saw) he aspires to produce woodtype to the standards of Delittle and Day & Collins.The very word is enough to put a smile on the face of any letterpress printer. 2’ treadle platen, a Farley-like Proofing press and a Harrild Pullmaster Proofing Press that used to belong to Her Majesty's Stationery Office) Mark originally made woodtype for himself to replace missing letters before realising he wasn’t the only printmaker with that problem and so McKellier Wood Type was born in 2018. With a collection of over 50 cases of wood type and three printing presses (a Cropper Charlton ‘Peerless No. Although largely self taught (a steep learning curve of over 6 months working out how to make type high blocks) Mark comes from a family of wood workers. Mark McKellier is a graphic designer with 30 years experience in design for print. Mark now uses his love of typography, patterns and letterpress printing to design and make wood type fonts (both revivals of old designs along with new fonts from type designers from around the world), ornaments, borders and replacement letters for printers who are 'out of sorts'.
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