We were recently approached by the talented Morgane VanTorre, who wanted to see the typeface she designed, Megh, brought to life as a letterpress wood type!

The commission involved the manufacture of 225 woodblocks which would comprise the complete letterpress fount. This exciting project would be our second-largest wood type commission after CNC machining Hamilton Artz for Erik Spiekermann.

Megh was machined from end grain beech polished to European type height: 23.566mm. Morgane designed her typeface so that the letters could be lined up with each other and appear to extend when printed. It was lovely to see this in action after Morgane kindly sent some photographs of her prints of Megh.

The full letterpress wood type fount involved both uppercase and lowercase woodblocks, with most lowercase letters at 12 Cicero size, apart from the 15 Cicero descenders. Before machining, close attention had to be paid to the measurements as exact spacing was required, and the spacing was designed to be filled perfectly with metal furniture. Morgane also requested something that we had not previously tried - that the characters be trimmed as close to the letters as possible; this was so all kerning could be achieved on the press.

A big congratulations to Morgane on finishing her diploma, and we can’t wait to see more of her work. It has been a pleasure making this, and I had some entertaining chats along the way!