History:

Whereas wood engraving and other printing media are used to convey images, Letterpress is the art of printing text. In China, individual wooden blocks or baked clay pieces with a specific character were printed together to form passages as early as 1040 C.E. Europe did not develop “Movable type” until the 15th century.

Movable type refers to the system of printing that uses individually cast letters to form the text body. While the Chinese language required several thousand individual characters, the Latin alphabet only contains 26.

Before movable type was invented in Europe, text was carved, in reverse, onto blocks of wood, just like images. When printed, the backwards letters were transfered correctly onto the paper. Books, whose pages were printed from both text and image carved on the same block, were called “Block-Books.” These books were common in the first half of the 15th century, before the proliferation of movable type transformed the industry of book production. Johannes Gutenberg is generally accepted as the inventor of movable type with the publication of his 42-line Bible in the 1450’s. However, some form of printing with movable type was being practiced by the Dutch some years before. Gutenberg’s true legacy lies in his making famous the means by which type could be accurately cast in large qualities.

Early on, all type was cast by hand. First, the typefounder created his letters in steel, in the form of a punch. He then punched a metal matrix (usually of brass) for ever letter of the alphabet. He was then able to cast the letters he needed, one at a time. Hot metal (usually a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony) was poured into a specially designed hand-mould, plugged at one end with the brass matrix, and open at the other, so lead could be poured in.

Type Faces:
Early fifteenth century printers were interested in printing books that imitated illuminated manuscripts as closely as possible. As a result, fifteenth century types were calligraphic in style, created through wide, straight lines. This typeface is referred to as “Gothic” or sometimes “Blackletter.” Later in the fifteenth century a more rounded and legible typeface emerged. These “Humanist” typeface more closely resembled the typefaces we are familiar with today.

After the initial leap from Gothic to Humanist, type designers did not stop creating different typefaces. The 10th century saw the complete range of type designs, from serif faces to san-serif socio-political statements. Stylistic changes in type design often coincided with broad historical changes.

The old way of creating typefaces in metal has almost disappeared. Today, font design is almost purely in the digital domain. Letterpress printers use a broad mic of lead type and newer digital fonts on photopolymer or metal relief plates.

Resources:

One of the most useful websites for letterpress information is the Briarpress site.

For an introduction to letterpress printing in the modern era, the Five Roses press has an excellent page.

The Prelinger Archives has a few films about letterpress printing and binding.

Downloads:

Casting & Mixing Printers Metals (PDF Download) (Righter-1923) is a little book first published in 1908. This is a downloadable edition from 1923. I have scanned it, run an OCR pass and formatted for distribution. (This PDF scan is available under the Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license).

—-

Bibliography:

Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography. London: Hyphen Press, 1969.

Hind, Arthur M. An Introduction to a History of Woodcut with a detailed survey of work done in the fifteenth century, 2 vols. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition. Oxford University Press.

Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937.