St Bride Library first opened its doors to readers in November 1895 and quickly established itself as one of the world’s most significant collections of books, artefacts and ephemera on printing, typography, paper-making and the graphic arts.
Join Sophie Hawkey-Edwards, Bob Richardson and Mick Clayton as we take you on a whistlestop tour of our labyrinthine Victorian building sharing highlights from our remarkable library and museum collections, exploring our fabulous workshop and learning about the history of our organization.
Bob Richardson qualified as an art teacher in 1976 but instead joined BBC Television as an assistant in the graphic design department, retiring in 2012 after thirty-five years’ service. As a fifteen-year-old student he was bitten by the letterpress bug and set up St Margaret’s Press which continues to turn out printed ephemera after half a century of inky operations.
Since retirement he has helped to run the library at St Bride Foundation and after a decade behind the enquiry desk is eventually beginning to find his way around.
St Bride Foundation is an independent cultural institute which cares for an internationally significant collection spanning print, design and typography. We exist to tell the story of print, providing creative inspiration for the communities of designers, printers, artists and the public who bring life to our building and library collections.
Within the eccentric maze of our Victorian building you can create original artworks on our treasury of historic printing presses, explore one of the largest collections of type specimens in the world, or fire your synapses with our carefully curated programme of talks. We revel in revealing and interpreting the power of language, from the design of a single letter to the pulling of a printed page.
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