Collotype workshop museum

Druckhaus Dresden, location of the collotype workshop museum

The collotype workshop museum in Dresden is a special museum on collotype . The technical monument is currently closed for a long time due to renovation work. The further development of the private museum is uncertain.

exhibition

The collotype workshop is located in the Dresden printing house on Bärensteiner Strasse in the Gruna district . Another Dresden museum, the Technical Collections, is nearby. The collotype workshop museum initially functioned as a “working museum”. The historic printing machines were in commercial operation to produce collotype prints. In addition to this technology collection, original prints and other documents of historical printing techniques, such as documents from letterpress , stone and gravure printing, are on display . There were also explanations about offset printing in the museum. A date for the reopening has not been set.

history

After Joseph Albert invented the color light printing process , Dresden companies acquired licenses for this technology. After offset printing had established itself, collotype printing was only a niche for reproducing photographs, manuscripts and graphics. Since it is one of the few processes that can be used to transfer halftones , collotype was also used in Dresden beyond the Second World War . The collotype printing company Arthur Kolbe in Dresden had been producing since 1925. It was a subsidiary of the May Art Institute on Kipsdorfer Strasse in Striesen . In the time of the GDR it belonged to VEB Grafischer Großbetrieb Völkerfreundschaft and produced collotype prints that were used as gifts for guests on state visits, among other things. After the reunification , the former workshop manager took over the company, which went bankrupt in 1993.

The Lower Saxon print shop owner Karl Nolle , who settled in Dresden around 1990, bought the eight old machines for a symbolic price of DM 1. Four of them could be obtained and were transported to the new location in the Dresden printing house on Bärensteiner Strasse. In March 1994 the re-established collotype workshop opened as a museum and was thus one of the last production facilities for collotype in the world. By 1998, around 200 prints had received awards from UNESCO . In 2001 the State Office for Monument Preservation declared the workshop a technical monument. A few years later it was closed.