The International Printing Museum

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The International Printing Museum

Interactive Museum on Printing History The Printing Museum in Carson has one of the largest working collections of antique printing machines in the world.

Visitors can experience the history of the printed word and letterpress through working tours, demonstrations, theatre presentations and special events throughout the year such as the Dickens Holiday Celebration in December, Independence Day Celebration and the Annual Los Angeles Printers Fair in October, and Boy Scout Merit Badge Programs throughout the year.

05/29/2026

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, the sound of ideas hitting paper is back! 🧠

Join us for QWERTY, a typewriter festival at the International Printing Museum on June 27 from 12 pm to 5 pm.

Try vintage machines, shop for typewriters and type-themed merch, compete in a no-backspace typing challenge, participate in a never-ending story, get minor repairs to machines, and join the ever-growing community of typists.

Come for the nostalgia. Stay for the rhythm.

Find more information and tickets at printmuseum.org/typewriter

QWERTY: A Typewriter Festival – Saturday, June 27, 12 pm to 5 pm

05/28/2026

There are 24 hours left of our Spring Flash Sale, and we don't want you to miss out on the opportunity! ⌛

We are offering a FLASH SALE: Book Arts Institute workshops are 15% off with promo code “FLASH15” at checkout, or register for a workshop with a friend for 25% off each ticket.* Full list of workshops below.

This offer is good until tomorrow, May 29, 2026, and can be used on May & June workshops. Discounts are good for new purchases only, cannot be combined, and do not apply to Museum events.

To register for a workshop, head to printmuseum.org/bookarts (link in bio)

05/27/2026

Happy Wooooood Type Wed-nes-day! 🪵

Clarendon was created as a metal typeface in England by Robert Besley in 1845 for the Fann Street Foundry. The typeface was named after the prestigious Clarendon Press in Oxford, which was home to the King James Version of the Bible, the Oxford English Dictionary, and other major publications. The Clarendon typeface is a compromise in weight between the heavier Antique/Egyptian and the lighter Roman. This change in weight, plus the use of brackets (rounded fillets), results in a simple yet elegant design. After three years of patent protection, Clarendon was widely copied and became very popular. Several variations of the typeface were generated and are still used today.

By the 1850s, Clarendon and its variations were being produced in wood type in the US by Bill, Stark & Co. and Wells & Webb. It was quickly adopted by wood-type manufacturers and found applications in newspaper headlines and various types of posters, including the legendary wanted posters of the Old West. The wood-type version of Clarendon is a much heavier typeface than its metal counterpart. According to R. R. Kelly's classic book on wood-type, the Clarendon wood-type resembled its metal counterpart only after 1850, when the Light Face and Extended styles were introduced. Today, we can find the Clarendon typeface in use in many applications, including Sony, the National Park Service, and Wells Fargo.

To see more of the Museum's wood-type collection, head to printmuseum.org/collection

05/26/2026

Book Arts Institute Workshop happens almost every weekend here at the International Printing Museum.

Here are some of the workshops that are coming up:
Cyanotype Prints & Drum Leaf Binding – Sat & Sun, May 30 & 31
Foil with Class: The Art of Hot Foil Stamping – Sat, May 30
Book Making: Photo Album/Journal – Sat, June 6
Book Making: Flag Bindings – Sun, June 7
Pattern Play: Screen Print Table Linens – Sat/Sun June 13 & 14
Foundational Calligraphy for Beginners – Sat, June 13
Letterform Collage: Letterpress & Collage – Sat, June 20
RISO PARTY – Sat, June 20
MiScreen Digital Screen Printing – Sun, June 28

We are offering discounts on our May & June workshops! 15% off using promo code "FLASH15" or 25% for two spots in the same workshop. This offer is good until May 29.

To register for workshops and learn more about the Book Arts Institute, head to printmuseum.org/bookarts

We hope to see you there!

05/24/2026

Meet the 1873 Gordon Job Press!

Although Stephen Ruggles was technically the inventor of the platen press, George Phineas Gordon’s presses had a much further reach. The platen presses Gordon marketed were the industry standard until the 1960s and can still be seen in print shops today. Gordon himself did not give much credit to Ruggles' invention. Rather, Gordon, an avid spiritualist, claimed that his ideas came from a dream where he was visited by Benjamin Franklin, who offered inspiration to create a new printing press. As thanks for this divine inspiration, Gordon called his jobbing press the Franklin Press.

Another name for this press is the Brass Arm Gordon, which refers to the brass arms on the side of the press that hold the rollers.

To learn more about this printing press and many others, head to our website printmuseum.org/collection

05/22/2026

Start summer with a BANG with this Book Arts Institute Flash Sale!

Get 15% off one workshop with promo code "FLASH15" or 25% when you buy two tickets for the same workshop. Pair up to save!

To see available workshops, head to printmuseum.org/bookarts (link in bio)

05/20/2026

According to Mac McGrew’s book on American typefaces, the John Hancock typeface was first introduced in metal by the Keystone Type Foundry in 1903. It was patented in 1906 with the patent assigned to Charles W. Smith, presumably the designer. It was named after John Hancock, one of our founding fathers, who was president of the Continental Congress and was also the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. This typeface was copied as wood-type soon enough to appear in the 1906 Hamilton specimen book.

McGrew described Hancock as a modern, no-frills, hard-working typeface. The serifs are modest in size, and the brackets have diagonal strokes most easily seen on the uppercase E, F, and T. The lowercase letters are tall with short ascenders and descenders. Manufactured by Hamilton.

05/19/2026

Upcoming workshops. 🤩

We are offering a discount on May and June Book Arts Institute Workshops!

Get 15% off one workshop with promo code "FLASH15" or 25% when you buy two tickets for the same workshop. Pair up to save!

To see available workshops, head to printmuseum.org/bookarts (link in bio)

05/16/2026

We are offering a discount on May and June Book Arts Institute Workshops!

Get 15% off one workshop with promo code "FLASH15" or 25% when you buy two tickets for the same workshop. Pair up to save!

To see available workshops, head to printmuseum.org/bookarts (link in bio)

05/15/2026

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack… give that key a tap-tap-tap! 📖

Before delete keys or autocorrect, there was the rhythm of words hitting paper on typewriters.

Join us for a Typewriter Festival on June 27 at the International Printing Museum. Try typing on vintage typewriters, write a poem, join a never-ending story, shop merch from vendors, and feel the magic of analog creation. Bring your own typewriter for the type-in or some repair estimates from our experts.

When: Sat, June 27, from 12 pm–5 pm
How: Tickets at printmuseum.org/typewriter (link in bio)

05/14/2026

Our replica Parlor Press is based on a design by the engineering firm Holtzappfel & Co., which produced a series of small presses in the 1830s.

The Parlor Press was designed by the English printer and inventor Edward Cowper. James Moran speculates in his book Printing Presses that Cowper’s design might have been inspired by a much older invention called a “Bellows Press.” With Augustus Applegath, his brother-in-law, Cowper also worked to improve flatbed and cylinder presses at the Bank of England and the Times.

In 1839, Holtzappfel & Co., which had made small-scale Stanhope presses, began to manufacture Cowper’s Parlor Press. No copy of the first set of instructions seems to have survived. The third edition of the press’s manual, Printing Apparatus for the Use of Amateurs (1846), contains descriptions of three sizes of Cowper’s press and of Holtzappfel’s Monotype printing press.

As the name suggests, the Parlor Press was mostly used by Victorian hobbyists who wanted to print cards for fun in the comfort of their own parlor. For some reason, the Parlor Press did not catch on in America to the extent that it did in England. In the States, small job platen presses became the most popular press for amateurs.

Address

315 W. Torrance Boulevard
Carson, CA
90745

Opening Hours

10am - 4pm

Telephone

(310) 515-7166

Website

https://linktr.ee/internationalprintmuseum, https://www.printmuseum.org/, http://printersfair.com/

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