Jeff & Joe Working on the Orphan Annie
The C.C. Stern Type Foundry is a working museum–with a focus on “working.” With one of the largest collections of Monotype casting matrices in the United States, the C.C. Stern Type Foundry honors the memory of C. Christopher Stern, who built and operated the foundry at Stern & Faye, Printers of Sedro-Woolley, Washington.
Our working museum is one of the only operating type foundries between San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C. Our capability to make metal type and decorative print elements, and to share that craft with the community, fills a growing need within the Pacific Northwest’s vital network of designers, letterpress printers and book artists.
The mission of the C.C. Stern Type Foundry is to cultivate a unique connection between industry and the arts in the Pacific Northwest. For the first phase of the museum’s operation, our focus will be on relearning the skills and revitalizing the experiences of the working type foundry. The museum will provide educational programming, including live demonstrations of the foundry equipment and type casting processes. The museum will provide working displays and collected references, and serve as an educational resource center for teachers and students of history, printing, publishing, design, creative writing, book arts, and journalism.
The Type Foundry provides a gathering place for type enthusiasts from all genres of study, connecting them with the Northwest’s printing history, as well as with national and international organizations devoted to typography, type casting and printing.