Type a line.
We'll set it in lead.
Three generations at the same corner of Lebuh Chulia. My grandfather cut the first sorts himself in 1938. I still ink the rollers by six each morning. Set your words below — I'll pull you a proof while you watch.
The composing bench
Capitals live in the upper case, in order — that's where the name comes from. The E box wears out first; we reach for it most.
— set a line, then pull the press —
Anatomy of a sort
One letter. A little brick of lead-and-antimony, cast the wrong way round so the paper reads it right.
Pick one up and it tells you which way it goes without looking — that's what the nick is for. Set a thousand of these in a stick and you have a page. We still have sorts my grandfather cast.
- 01The faceThe raised, mirrored letter — the only part that touches paper.
- 02The nickA groove you feel in the dark; it tells you the sort is upright.
- 03The bodyThe shank. Its width is the letter's width — an i is thin, a W is fat.
- 04The feetWhere it stands, dead square, so the line locks up true.
What we pull
Kad Kahwin
Wedding cards pressed deep enough to read with your thumb. Malay, Jawi, Tamil or Chinese — we set all four in the same chase.
Kad Nama
Name cards with a bite to them. People turn them over looking for how it was done. That bite is the point.
Letterheads
A shop letterhead in one ink and a rule line. Nothing shouts. It doesn't have to — the paper does the talking.
Sijil & Certs
Certificates set in caps, numbered by hand, sealed in press blue. The kind you keep in a drawer for forty years.
Sampul Surat
Envelopes with a return address on the flap. Small job, but the machine doesn't know small from large.
Cop & Chops
A carved chop or a wood-type poster. When the letters are bigger than your hand, we set them on the floor.
The shop on Chulia
My grandfather bought one platen press off a departing printer in 1938 and never moved it. It sits where he put it.
My father added the second press in 1971 and the wood type after that. I added nothing except my thumbs and a stubbornness about the ink — we still mix it by eye, still pull the first proof by hand before the count starts. Digital is quicker. It isn't the same, and my customers know the difference by touch.
People ask why we keep the lead. Because a machine that has printed for eighty-eight years is not a machine you retire. It's a member of the family who happens to weigh a tonne.