The Royal Press, Malacca

Finally!

A trip to The Royal Press, Melaka since they re-opened to the public after major refurbishment works last year. And so I dragged my ever supportive dear friend Jasmine along with me to Melaka. Good thing was we got to meet Chan Lek and Leanne who traveled up from JB for a gathering session.

So, it's indeed a fruitful day :)

For those who are wondering, The Royal Press is a more than 70 years old letterpress printing shop which has now basically ceased major operations and turned into a museum for public visits. The main intention of the Ee Family (the founder) on the preservation of the Royal Press is to share the art of letterpress printing (which can already be considered a cultural heritage) for generations to come. The ancient method of printing has basically reached the era of extinction but yet many artists, craftsmen, stationers and like parties are hopping on to the time machine to bring letterpress printing back to life. 

For those who have yet to know me or who yet to read my posts on Letterpress in Malaysia and Love Letterpress by Larina, yup, I'm definitely one of the interested parties who will strive to keep letterpress well and alive. I'm not sure if I can be of any service to The Royal Press but I've already signed up for the volunteering works!

You'll probably be overwhelmed with the following snapshots of The Royal Press and be thinking .. WTF? Just take deep breaths and marvel your eyes at the collection of gigantic machines and the library of types (type is a letter or character mounted on a block) in 4 different languages that The Royal Press can offer. Everything is gonna be okay.  

The work desk of the Ee Family

One of the collection of the letterpress machines

The amazing library of types

And you think you've seen it all..

The types are arranged according to the labels

When types and leads meet..perfection is produced

A Linotype machine which is hardly used anymore

Leong, counting the number of types available for each Chinese character 
Very meditating to some :)

Can you see how small the type is?
These are the types used to print newspaper articles in the olden days before the birth of computers.