New Mexico History Museum | September 2025

The Press of the Palace of the Governors is a working exhibition of historic printing and binding equipment from New Mexico. The presses in the collection still function to produce the printed material that can be seen in the shop – limited edition books and portfolios, broadsides, cards, and posters.

They represent the kinds of presses you might find if you walked into any frontier printing office in the 19th century. The Palace Print Shop type collection includes over 200 fonts! They represent 60 different type families commonly used in Old West journalism. These metal type pieces are stored in what is known as the California Job Case. Prior to this time printers set type by hand from 2 boxes, one of which was placed above the other. The case above held the capital letters, with the small letters below. This is why we now refer to these letters as upper- and lowercase!

We hope you will join us this month and in the months to come for demonstrations, lectures and programming, including a Fall Print Party on October 25th, in the singular and historically relevant Palace Press.