About Us
Turku Type Revival is Sakari Männistö and Frode Helland.
Sakari Männistö
Sakari Männistö is a letterpress printer and operator of the Letterpress House Turku. Männistö trained as a neophyte under the master printer Thomas Gravemaker in Amsterdam. His print shop houses two manual printing machines, a 1920’s English Arab platen press (aka. “The Old Lady”) and German Korrex Hannover proof press (aka. “The Young Lad”).
Frode Helland
Frode Helland is a visual artist, graphic designer and type designer – a reader, observer and maker of letterforms, drawing upon historical research, socio-cultural perspectives and creative collaboration to shape and challenge visual language. He gratuated with a Master’s degree in graphic design and illustration from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2023. Frode makes up one third of the Norwegian type foundry Monokrom Skriftforlag, a tiny, not-so-cool, and painfully slow, independent publisher of original high quality typefaces.
Collaborators
Petrescu Press, Sibiu
Aura Antikva is manufactured by Petrescu Press in Sibiu, Romania. The typeface is milled from beech wood in two sizes.
Jens Jørgen Hansen, Copenhagen
Jens Jørgen Hansen’s print shop in Copenhagen is a workshop partner.
Marit Brandsnes, Moelv
Marit Brandsnes is a letterpress printer and the manager of Foreningen Verkstedet in Moelv, hosting the Turku Type Revival for a combined workshop and lecture in the spring of 2025.
National Academy of the Arts, Oslo
The project initial started as Frode Helland’s master project at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2023, under the guidance of letterpress printer Ane Thon Knudsen. The Academy also host a workshop and lecture in the spring of 2025.
Antikvariat Morris, Södertälje
The Sjökvist’s operate the finest typographic bookshop in Fenno-Scandinavia, offering invaluable historical knowledge and enthusiasm. Antikvariat Morris is additional the reseller of the first letterpress-printed Aura Antikva type specimen.
Anna Perälä, Helsinki
Anna Perälä is the foremost historian of Finnish typography, and the author of the trilingual double-volume Suomen typografinen atlas (Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto, 2000) cataloging the typefaces, woodcuts and printers from the early period of printing in Finland. Perälä is an advisor to the Turku Type Revival project.
Hannu Salmi, Turku
Hannu Salmi is a professor of cultural history at the University of Turku, and an advisor to the Turku Type Revival project.
Åbo Akademi, Turku
Heidi Honga and Yrsa Neuman provided access to the comprehensive collection of dissertations and prints from the Regia Academiæ Aboensis housed at the Åbo Akademi library. (Despite the shared name, the Åbo Akademi is not the successor of the original.) The academy also hosted the first public exhibition of the project under the title “Halcyone Days at the Academiæ Aboensis printing press”.