The Practice of Presswork

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Privately Published. Good+ with no dust jacket. 1919. First Edition. Hardcover. Bumps and wear to corners and spine ends. Light soil to cover papers. Wear and soil to spine label. Offsetting at the head of pages 106-107 from a scrap of paper used as a marker.; A to-the-point, dense, but readily understandable explanation of the physical process of letterpress printing. If you collect, print, or sell letterpress printed books, this volume explains how the printed pages came to be. Covers presses, makeready, inks, rollers, feeding, hand composition, Linotype, Monotype, and photoengraving.Illustrated with monochrome plates and cuts of presses, engravings, etc. Preface and Introduction by the author. Craig Reno Spicher, 1886-1963, was an Instructor in Presswork with the Department of Printing at Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 1920 Census listed him as a "Pressman" engaged in "Job Press Printing." Laid, stiff pastedowns and endpapers. Printed on cream paper. One would think that this printer would have specified the types used, but no. In half, green cloth with tan, laid paper over boards. Paper spine label and title in black to front. The front endpaper bears Joseph C. Sexton's bookplate of a monk writing at a desk. Useful to both the printer and those who want to understand their letterpress printed books. Externally, this book is clean, but has obviously been a working copy with typical wear. It's internally clean and overall between Good+ and Very Good-.; B&W Illustrations; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 240 pages .