The Norwegian Printing Museum opens in Stavanger, Norway, on 20 November. It is located on the site of a former sardine can factory in the historic old town. The factory building is home to the Norwegian Canning Museum. It has been architecturally extended by Eder Biesel Arkitekter. The exhibition in the new building is by ATELIER BRÜCKNER. Both museums operate jointly under the brand IDDIS, derived from iddikett, the word for label in the regional dialect.
The Norwegian Printing Museum covers more than 40,000 years - from the first human records in the form of cave paintings to the digital present. One focus is on the change in printing techniques for words and images - with regional and local references: In Stavanger, the art of printing flourished from the late 19th century onwards, as the local fish canning industry attracted numerous printing orders. The label had central importance for the marketing of the canned fish. From Stavanger they were exported all over the world - until the 1950s. The exhibition offers playful access to more than a thousand sardine can labels. They are digitally indexed. In addition, the historical lithography stones, a lithography press, various printing rollers and the furnishings of a photo laboratory are impressive. In a spacious workshop area, the Print Shop, on the upper floor of the museum, half a dozen historical printing presses can also be admired in action.
The museum exhibition extends over two large room units on the ground floor of the building, which are connected by a common media tunnel. The staged corridor is the climax of the exhibition. It can be entered from both sides. The tour is laid out chronologically: If the visitor enters the museum from the Canning Museum, the first exhibition room deals with the reproduction of the image with a focus on lithography and photography. A flood of images rises from a camera, which spirals down the media corridor to the present and then leads back to a Gutenberg printing press, accompanied by daily newspapers, typewriters and early computers.
The printing press is the central exhibit in the second exhibition room. It is the turning point in terms of content and space: the invention of movable type made it possible to distribute printed matter on a large scale from 1450 onwards. Printed sheets shot up from the press and into the media tunnel. They lead up to today's e-publishing.
Before the printing industry became established, the scriptorium was the central place of written reproduction. It is staged as a spatial unit - equivalent to the printing press.
The exhibition rooms are structured by means of cubic shelves made of wood. The cubes can be individually combined and can be equipped with exhibits or printed. The guiding principle of this arrangement system are typesetting boxes in which the letters of the printing industry found their place. The Print Shop on the upper floor of the building is also designed to be flexible: The theme texts and exhibit labels are printed on boards. They are inserted into wooden strips around the exhibition space and into the chest-high zoning that separates individual thematic areas: various printing processes are on display for comparison. Typesetting and bookbinding are also themes. Stavanger's printing industry, with its rattling marvels, continues to fascinate to the present day.
The exhibition is open Tuesday to Friday: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursdays also 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.