Welcome to the Virtual Museum of Printing Blog!

Printing blocks for composing calendars from the Winterbourne Press

This is where you can find monthly instalments from the world of printing history, printing collections, archives, and museums. This blog is a forum for researchers, curators, archivists, other heritage professionals, and print enthusiasts to share their work and ideas. 

It’s also a way for the Museum to keep you updated on its progress and collaborations. With that in mind, here's a little bit of history…

The idea for a national museum of printing was first cooked up by the Printing Historical Society. Thanks to the inspiration and heritage expertise of Lee Hale, this then became a project to create a virtual museum (which is a whole lot easier than finding space, collections and, of course, money!).

Lee gathered around him a group of collaborators, forming a Steering Group, and then an Executive Group. With the support of the University of Birmingham, the University of Sussex, the Baskerville Society, the National Printing Heritage Committee, some time later this beautiful Virtual Museum appeared. 

At the moment, the Museum hosts a directory: here in one place you can find out all about the dispersed printing history collections held in the British Isles. We also have one case study, featuring the fascinating Winterbourne Press.

We are building on all of this and have plans to feature more case studies, 3D videos of individual artefacts, and examples from individual collections in the form of pictures and text.

You can read all about the people involved on our web page, and you can find out more about the Virtual Museum’s intentions on the About page.

We will keep you up-to-date on developments via this blog. And we are always keen to hear from potential contributors with ideas. You can download the blog brief, or you can email the Blog Editor, Shijia Yu.

Thanks for reading and for your interest in the journey of the Virtual Museum of Printing!