shashasha

The national printing office in Paris, one of the oldest of its kind.
Dai Nippon Print, who convey the beautiful latin alphabet printing.

A photo book that unravels the history of the letter type’s propagation throughout the world and captures the final appearance of the metal type letterpress before its inevitable vanishing.

The national printing office in Paris, closed in 2006, had preserved the Western European tradition of the letterpress printing technique since Gutenberg’s days, and has had a tremendous influence on the development of modern typefaces, from the Garamond type, cuneiform or hieroglyphs, Greek, Arabic, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Javanese, Tibetian, then Kanji and Kana… In Tokyo, Dai Nippon Print have preserved and handed down the beauty and glory of the Japanese Mincho metal typeface.

In its unparalleled, spectacular fieldwork, Moji no Hahatachi - Le Voyage Typographique combines photos taken in Paris and Tokyo to show the dialogue between Western and Eastern civilisations inherent in the metal letterpress, as well as pay tribute to the last living artisans of the field.

— from the publisher’s statement