Wisconsin Life

[playful strings music] - Georgianne Liesch: Hamilton's started making wood type here in the late 1800s.

Wood type was actually used mostly for headlines and poster printing.

To all the type designers in the world and graphic designers, you know, Two Rivers is known for their wood type.

[energetic instrumental] I am a wood type cutter here at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum.

I cut wood type using the antique pantographs.

And it can sometimes take, you know, 20 minutes to an hour to set up.

But when you hit that sweet spot where it's perfectly centered top-to-bottom to the side, it's like, [whispering] "Yes!"

All right.

When I turn this on, sawdust is going to be flying off.

[whirring] [high-pitched saw blade] It's just a simple tracing machine where we trace patterns on one platform, and it is simultaneously cutting that shape on another platform.

We do entire fonts, upper and lowercase.

We do numbers.

We do punctuation.

Ampersands seem to be very, very popular, no matter what style it's in.

Yep, there we go.

We actually can cut font in foreign languages.

For instance, this summer I cut a font in Hebrew.

My dad was a printer.

He took a lot of pride in the work that he did at the Hamilton Manufacturing Company.

I watched him one day, and I realized, "Oh, my God!

"He's, like, in his eighties, and if something happens to him, this dies with him."

[snap] [blade whirring] So, I decided that day that I was going to learn how to do it because there was nobody else; nobody else available to do it.

[sanding] I started learning how to cut wood type from my dad.

I was constantly peppering him with questions all the time, hoping to get as much information as I could.

Ampersands require lots of detail work.

I used that opportunity to also get to know my dad better.

So, he was instrumental in much of the knowledge that I have gained.

I think in the end, it was almost a labor of love, that, you know, for me to learn it and for him to teach it.

And...

The wood type that's named after him called the "Brylski."

We're very Polish.

And he wanted to put in sort of an ethnic quality to it.

It's a little bit flowery.

Oh, look at this!

Another ampersand right here.

You start to appreciate the differences among fonts and what makes them special in one way or another.

I've cut many of these.

Did you see this?

My tattoo.

I like the process of making wood type.

I like to feel the wood.

I like to cut the type.

I guess, sense of honoring my dad, that's what gets me most excited about it.

You know, it just seeps into you.

Next thing you know, you can't imagine not being here.