Six Centuries of Type & Printing (letterpress and ebook bundle)
Six Centuries of Type & Printing (letterpress and ebook bundle)
Fewer than 45 copies of the edition of 400 remain!
If you ever wondered how the craft of printing was invented and how it evolved, this book answers that question and many others. Starting even before Gutenberg, Six Centuries of Type & Printing traces the development of type design, type manufacture, presses, and printing through the present digital era with many stops along the way. The book explains how many aspects of printing and type remain the same, despite a shift from metal to photography to bits, across almost six centuries of constant improvement. Printed in a single edition of 400. Read an excerpt.
The book was set in hot-metal Monotype Bembo in the north of England, illustrations etched onto zinc plates, and text and illustrations printed by letterpress in London. It is a clothbound hardcover book with its title foil-stamped on the cover and spine, and it comes in a slip case, bound in the same material. Binding was performed in Germany near the Black Forest.
The book is 6 by 9 inches, and 64 pages long, printed in two colors, with custom-designed endpapers. The ebook edition, included with this purchase, has three additional pages containing a bibliography and references. You will receive a link via email shortly after your order for the ebook download.
Of remaining copies, you can choose between a standard (blank) slipcase and a slipcase with Tiny Type Museum & Time Capsule foil stamped onto one short edge—the book was part of that 2019–2022 project.
Books ship within five business days. The final price at checkout includes shipping within the U.S. Sales tax is added during checkout for Washington State residents. No tax is collected for other U.S. states.
You’ll learn about Gutenberg’s unique invention, the type hand mold, and how it pulled all the pieces of contemporary technology together to print one of the still most beautiful books ever published. Six Centuries details how the standard press worked, a fixture from the 1450s to the 1800s, and why development stagnated in many areas. It explains how, in the late 1700s, innovation picked up and never stopped, with new techniques to produce type in massive quantities and print at ever-faster speeds.
The book also covers the modern era, detailing the transition from metal to photographic to digital technologies, which disrupted the lives of printers and the industry again and again. It ends on a cheery note with the reinvigoration of letterpress printing, a craft that nearly died in the digital era, but now is in the midst of a craft renaissance.