Typographia Sinica

The Typographia Sinica (shelfmark: Libri sin. 19) is a cabinet furniture whose top 8 drawers contain a total of 3,287 small, stamp-shaped wooden cubes with Chinese characters. The cabinet was built around 1685 on the order of the orientalist Andreas Mueller (1630–1694) for the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm to facilitate the learning of the Chinese language and most probably to be used for printing a dictionary. Originally exhibited in the Elector’s library in the Berlin Palace, the Typographia Sinica is one of the most valuable objects in the East Asian Collection of the Berlin State Library and is now on display in the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. The object was 3D-digitised in connection with the exhibition. The sample data contain the 3D model of drawer 2 and 3 and of the whole cabinet.