Tipoteca is a type museum in the village of Cornuda at the Alpine foothills north of Venice. The museum, owned by Silvio Antiga and the Antiga family (also the proprietors of commercial printer Grafiche Antiga), has considerable quantities and varieties of nineteenth- and twentieth-century metal and wood type. Besides type, the collections include equipment such as the great composing machines (Linotype, Monotype and the lesser-known Typograph), dozens of hand presses including the oldest Italian-made Stanhope (1840) and cylinder presses – all restored to working order. Of special interest is an area dedicated to Luigi Melchiori, a local man who manufactured his own wood type and sold it to Italian printers in the early 1900s. There are also sections on lithography, wood engraving and music printing. The museum organises workshops and regularly makes its type and presses available for printers and designers.
The library has a collection of type specimen books including a copy of Bodoni’s Manuale Tipografico (1818), an archive of work by type designer Aldo Novarese and a rare complete collection of Raffaello Bertieri’s Risorgimento Grafico (1902-1940).