The Printing Museum

The Printing Museum forms the historical and knowledge-preserving part of Kunstprenteverket. The collection consists of historic printing equipment from different areas of graphic production and shows how machines, tools, and working methods have been used to create books, fine art prints, and other printed materials.

The collection includes printing presses, typesetting machines, hand-setting equipment, bookbinding tools, and other specialised equipment related to traditional printing craftsmanship.

While Kunstprenteverket provides artists with opportunities to work with graphic techniques today, the Printing Museum helps preserve the history, machines, and knowledge on which these techniques are based.

Parts of the collection have been moved to Landeskogen, where the Printing Museum is becoming part of a living environment for graphic art, printmaking, and knowledge sharing.

Many of the machines in the collection are still in working condition. Several can be demonstrated and used to produce new prints, both within fine art printmaking and book production.

An important part of Kunstprenteverket’s purpose is that the equipment should not only be preserved as historical objects. A machine that can still be used tells a different story from one that is only displayed. Through activity, knowledge, working processes, and craftsmanship are made accessible to new generations.

Demonstrations and practical work give visitors the opportunity to experience how printing was actually carried out – the sound of the machines, the materials, the rhythm of the work, and the precision required to create a finished result.

When a historic press is put into operation, the technology is not only explained – it is experienced.

The Printing Museum is based on the understanding that cultural heritage is best preserved when it remains in use. Historical techniques and machines gain new meaning when they become part of artistic practice, education, and public engagement.

Through demonstrations, collaboration, and practical activities, visitors, artists, and professional communities can gain insight into processes that might otherwise easily disappear.

The collection also provides opportunities to explore the relationship between historic technology and contemporary artistic expression. Traditional working methods can be applied in new ways, and historic machines can become tools for today’s artists.

Kunstprenteverket collaborates with other museums and professional communities working with graphic cultural heritage, both nationally and internationally.

Through contact, exchange of experience, and collaboration, knowledge about the preservation, restoration, and use of historic printing equipment is shared. These networks strengthen the work of safeguarding a technical and craft-based cultural heritage that requires specialised expertise.

Kunstprenteverket at Landeskogen combines creative practice with the preservation of graphic cultural heritage. The Printing Museum is an important part of this whole.

Here, historic machines, traditional working methods, and today’s artists come together. The collection provides insight into the origins of these techniques while helping to keep the knowledge alive through continued use.

In this way, the Printing Museum is not merely a collection of old equipment, but an active resource for art, learning, and the continuation of graphic craftsmanship.