Books on Letterpress Printing

printing-booksInstructional Books about Printing

Hard Copies

Elementary Platen Presswork by Ralph W. Polk

General Printing by Glen U. Cleeton, Charles W. Pitkin, and Raymond L. Cornwell

A Guide to Experimental Letterpress Techniques by Barbara Tetenbaum

Letterpress Now: A DIY Guide to New & Old Printing Methods by Jessica C. White

Letterpress Printing: A Manual for Modern Fine Press Printers by Paul Maravelas

Practical Printing—A Handbook of the Art of Typography by John Southward

The Practice of Printing: Letterpress and Offset by Ralph W. Polk Edwin W. Polk

Printing for Pleasure by John Ryder

E-books

American Encyclopaedia of Printing by John Luther Ringwalt (on Google Books)

The American Printer: a Manual of Typography Containing Complete Instructions for Beginners as Well as Practical Directions for Managing All Departments of a Printing Office with Several Useful Tables, Schemes for Imposing Forms in Every Variety, Hints to Authors and Publishers, Etc., Etc. by Thomas MacKellar (on Google Books)

American Specimen Book of Type Styles from American Type Founders Company, 1917 (on Google Books

First Steps in Letterpress by David Hughes (for Kindle)

Inland Printer magazine, various issues (on Google Books)

Making Ready on Platen Presses by George F. Bradford (on Google Books)

Platen Printing Presses by Daniel Baker (on Google Books)

The Practice of Presswork by Craig Reno Spicher (on Google Books)

The Printers’ Journal and Typographical Magazine, Volume 2 (on Google Books)

Specimens and price list of brass type: Borders, ornaments and brass rule for the use of bookbinders, boxmakers and advertising manufacturers by American Type Founding Company (on Google Books)

Books on Contemporary Practitioners

Letterpress: The Allure of the Handmade by David Jury

The Little Book of Letterpress by Charlotte Rivers

The Vandercook 100: Celebrating 100 Artisans and 100 Years of Letterpress Printing on the Vandercook Proof Press by Heather Mitchell

Books on Type

American Metal typefaces of the Twentieth Century by Mac McGrew

American Wood Type: 1828-1900: Notes on the Evolution of Decorated and Large Types by Rob Roy Kelly

Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use: a Study in Survivals by D.B. Updike

Just My Type by Simon Garfield

A Secret History of Letters by Simon Loxley

Books on Printing History

Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers: The Printer as Designer and Craftsman, 1700-1914 by David Jury

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing: Collection of Letterpress Examples with Specimens of Type, Ornament, Corner Fills, Borders, Twisters, Wrinklers, and other Freaks of Fancy by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas

Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type by William E. Loy

The Swifts: Printers in the Age of Typesetting Races by Walker Rumble

Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype: The Origin of Digital Typesetting by Rich Hopkins

 

Children’s Books about Printing

The History of Printmaking published by Scholastic Voyages of Discovery

Gutenberg’s Gift: A Book Lover’s Pop-Up Book by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Bryan Leister

Squeaks Discovers Type: How Print Has Expanded Our Universe published by the U.S. Government Printing Office

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