Last July, the Musée et Atelier de l'imprimerie de Bordeaux was in great danger and appealed for help in finding premises to house its magnificent collection of machines and objects linked to the history of printing.
A wasted effort! All that will remain of the museum is the plaque commemorating Jacques Chaban-Delmas's inauguration of "La maison des métiers de l'imprimerie" in September 1987.
But excellent newsâeuros! A very large part of our heritage has already found refuge and will not be scrapped.
From Gironde to Loiret...
The Atelier-Musée de l'imprimerie de Malesherbes (AMI) in the Loiret region, created by printer Jean-Paul Maury, has just received a very large part of the collection - 50 tonnes of material requiring the use of four semi-trailers and no less than 200 pallets.
100 machines, including a five-ton Warin, a 3.5-ton Marinoni, a linotype, a multitude of typos, objects such as gilding irons and paper dryers, over 2,500 stones from the Lithothèque and the entire archives of the Musée et Atelier de l'imprimerie de Bordeaux are now housed at AMI.
For Jean-Marc Providence, director of AMI, as the establishment has been awarded the "Musée de France" label, it was necessary to "save this collection" . Some of the material, after restoration if necessary, will be reintegrated into the permanent exhibition, while the rest will be kept in reserves which, in time, should become open to visitors.
A peaceful retirement for Simonne
Would Simonne, a 30-ton roll-stop press and sole survivor of a series of seven large presses built at the beginning of the 20th century, end up on the scrap heap? Of course not. According to Jean-Marc Providence, this old lady, a witness to an era born in the Bordeaux region and difficult to transport, would have found refuge in Bordeaux.
And a refuge found in other departments... and countries
According to News Day a font has even been shipped to Japan.
The Jardins typographiques in Châteauroux and the typos workshops in Bourges and Romorantin recovered a few pieces, as did a workshop in Pessac, which welcomed an 1820 Stanhope.
