A good friend of mine just came back from Taiwan with a very thoughtful gift, something related to our recent ventures of Travel Photo Cafe event. It is a set of four traditional Chinese character lead types "å\'å¡æå\...". These characters are actually the name of a Japanese movie called Café Lumière directed by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien 侯åè³¢.
These beautiful traditional Chinese lead types were made by the last type-casting shop in Taiwan called Ri Xing Typography æ¥æé\'åè¡. This shop holds the world's last complete set of Traditional Chinese letterpress copper mould for lead type-casting. In order to preserve and digitize the typefaces, which consists of 3 fonts each with 7 sizes totaling 200,000 lead types, a group of cultural enthusiastic in Taiwan devised a restoration/preservation project which was openly supported by Taiwan President Ma in end June this year.
Shop owner Mr. Cheung å¼µä»å hopes to transform his shop into a printing museum. You can tell from his face that he enjoys sharing his knowledge and how the whole process works with visitors and guided tours.
