Restoring, commissioning, learning and using linecasting machines from The Oldham Evening Chronicle. Operated by keyboard, they cast lines of type for printing, from molten lead alloy. Once a mainstay of commercial printing, such machines have found no place in the current revival of letterpress as craft, and this parallels their uneasy relationship with printing and typography conceived as craft a century ago. Deploying the technology in the living context of today’s letterpress community should offer special insight into how machine composition of type relates to ‘handcraft’, physical and digital typography, and the value of preserving material culture in use.

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