News
Exhibition “The Lead Letter Collection of Josef Gruber”
16 Jan 2026
A rare collection on the material culture of the printed book
© UB der LMU München
The University Library of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich received a very special gift in the fall of 2019: retired Passau typesetter Josef Gruber (* 1940) bequeathed his collection of lead letters to the library. The collection includes a fully stocked type case for an Antiqua font and two complete type cases for a Grotesk font with uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
The collection is rounded off with, among other things, typographic sketch files from the Bauer foundry in Frankfurt am Main, a thread counter, a square, and the collector's Gautschbrief (certificate of apprenticeship). This gives the University Library a rare collection of objects related to the culture of printed books, as the lead type of many printing houses was disposed of en masse at the end of the last century and is now irretrievably lost.
Date and location of the exhibition
- Duration of the exhibition: 16 January 2026 – 3 July 2026
- Location: Foyer of the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz Learning Center in the LMU Main Building, building section F, 2nd floor (F205, location on the floor plan (LMU Raumfinder)), Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München
Contact
Dr. Sven Kuttner
University Library of LMU Munich
Deputy director
Special Collections Department
E-mail: sven.kuttner@ub.uni-muenchen.de