An onion heap

In 2006, the print house of the Riigi Teataja (The State Reporter) was closed in Tallinn, and the team of Polymer culture factory (one of the predecessors of TYPA) rescued the printing machines from scrap metal. The city could not decide what to do with this equipment, and while some of it was given to Polymer, a large part of the equipment was stored in the garage of the center of culture Kultuurikatel.

When The Printing Museum was founded in 2010, the museum researched the possibility of transporting the items to Tartu. However, despite several inquiries, the city of Tallinn was hesitant – until a tragic event occurred in 2011. During the construction works at the Kultuurikatel, some thieves noticed forty-eight boxes of alphabetically sorted metal type. In order to easily transport them to the scrap yard, the thieves tipped all the types together in one box. Fortunately, they were caught at this point, but it was clear that the print equipment could not be safely stored in the Kultuurikatel. The  Printing Museum received a phone call from Tallinn: “Could you move everything out by the day after tomorrow?” In total, there were two truckloads of machinery, type, and furniture, but they managed to empty the garage within a few days.  However, the jumbled piles of type, affectionately called ‘the onion heap’ by print workers, still adored TYPA today.