Christoph Sünder is a master printer. He’s the director of the workshop at the Druckladen, which is the department for educational programs at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. He regularly uses old type made of a lead alloy for his printing work
I n the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz we’ve got more than a hundred cupboards full of old lead type from hundreds of different fonts. We bought them up or received them as gifts from printing companies that have gone out of business. We use this lead type to create unique products: certificates, texts, and cards for special occasions. Today hand-printed materials are regarded as art.
Johannes Gutenberg did not want to create a work of art, even though that’s how we think of the Gutenberg Bible today. Gutenberg, a native of Mainz, wanted to reproduce written documents faster and more flexibly than was usual back then. Before approximately 1450, when he invented book printing with movable type made of lead, books were copied out by hand or laboriously printed with woodcuts. The book “writers” were usually monks, and they needed about two years to complete a copy of the Bible. Thanks to Gutenberg, book production became much faster and cheaper from then on. Lead revolutionized book printing, and over time it made education possible for all.
We can only speculate about why Gutenberg chose lead. No original type from his era has survived, nor has any written account been handed down. The issue was probably decided by the fact that lead is easy to work with. It’s a heavy metal that is easily malleable and has a relatively low melting point of about 300 degrees Celsius. That means it can be melted over a flame.
When I talk about lead as a printer, I’m actually referring to an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. This composite is very suitable for printing: It cools quickly but nonetheless remains stable. After all, the letters shouldn’t contain any air bubbles or change their shape after cooling off.
In order to produce the type for hand printing, the liquid metal was poured into a hollow mold, and the individual letters and punctuation marks were placed together—back-to-front and upside down—on so-called galleys to form words, sentences, and entire texts. The result was a forme of type that could print any desired quantity. It was clamped into the printing press, inked, and printed on sheets of paper. This process was to hold sway for more than 500 years.