TYPA centre hosts many different activities: a museum, a studio for letterpress and intaglio techniques, an education centre for schools, an art gallery, an artist-in-residence program and a workshop where we handcraft stationery from recycled materials and industry leftovers.

Founded as a non-profit in 2010, TYPA has become an important center for graphic arts and printmaking in the University Town of Tartu, Estonia. Collaboration with several art schools and artists from around the world gives us a steady flow of the freshest and brightest ideas that we try to cast into physical form as prints, books, postcards... Sometimes it all works out, sometimes all we are left with is ink on our fingers.

The majority of the products in our shop are made of old discarded books.
Every month, tons of books are discarded by Estonian libraries, schools, recycling centres etc - mostly from the Soviet era when some of the print runs were extremely large. Amongst the discarded books you’ll find obsolete science and technical literature, Soviet propaganda, outdated encyclopedias but sometimes also classics. Most of these books end up in the landfill as hardcover books are not accepted for recycling. Luckily, some of them reach our studio where we repurpose the covers or spines into journals and secret boxes. The text blocks are not wasted either, but are sent for recycling to a local paper factory.

Whenever you buy something from our Etsy shop, your purchase will be used to fund the preservation of historical print and book binding equipment as well as to support our educational activities for schools. Thank you!