Typographic Pictures Composed Entirely of Brass Rule (2024)

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 essen ... Read full article.