Typographic Pictures Composed Entirely of Brass Rule (2024)

Summary

Typographic Portrait of Jean Sibelius Composed Entirely of Brass Rule In the dimly lit “printing cellar” of Media Museum and Archives Merkki is a remarkable and curious object. It’s a mosaic of tightly arranged brass rule and spacing material, made by a Finnish typographer Valto Malmiola in 1937. Note, it’s not a single piece of metal, and it’s neither engraved nor etched… it’s thousands of individual metal bits, pieced together by hand, and locked tightly into a frame for printing. Figure 1. Forme for the Jean Sibelius print at the Media Museum and Archives Merkki. When inked and pressed onto paper, it creates an image of the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Figure 2. Portrait of Jean Sibelius, composed entirely of brass rule. But, to me at least, the resulting image itself is not what’s interesting here. After all, it’s a fairly conventional portrait of Sibelius. What’s interesting and what makes the whole thing remarkable is how it’s made and how it came to be. It’s essentially a form of proto-ASCII art: intentionally (mis)using techniques and materials originally intended for printing text to craft complex visual art. What led to its creation? What is it anyway? Where did Malmiola get the idea to use letterpress in such an unconventional way? The Use of Rules Malmiola writes about the inspiration for the picture in the Finnish printing arts periodical Kirjapainotaito: “When our renowned master composer Jean Sibelius turned 70 in 1935, [...] I was struck with a strange dream of trying to replicate his image using impractical typographic methods. I had previously seen pictures "set" with Monotype fonts and decorations in foreign graphic design trade journals, particularly "The Inland Printer", so I decided to try, but not with type and ornament, but with rule. To give a bit of context, in letterpress printing, rules are strips of metal, often brass or type-cast metal, used for printing lines. They’ve been an integral part of printing since the early 1500’s. ...