this post is part of a series of posts on books related to the book arts that i've read (to the extent that some of these are "readable"). books with f represent items i'm particularly taken with.

letterpress

b Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type by Geoffrey Dowding.

neglected to write down the edition, i think 3rd? i expect this is useful as a workshop reference if you are looking at your form and aren't sure why it looks off. less useful if you have to get it via interlibrary loan, unless you take copious notes/photographs of the examples.

b f When a Printer Plays by Richard J. Hoffman, 1987.

a very beautiful and – dare i say it – inspiring book. the inking leaves a bit to be desired, but in terms of just sheer number of examples of how you can put together ornaments, it's fantastic. it's great to be able to see how ornaments can be used at scale, as so often, the examples one sees online (e.g. when buying them) rarely do much to make the ornaments exciting.

b f Five Hundred Years of Book Design by Alan Bartram, British Library, 2001.

It is, at its core, very snarky and very opionated. And very much of the Jan Tschichold school of design. But even with that, the commentary is insightful for pointing out small details (even if one might not agree with the opprobrium). The pictures are high quality and show off pages from well known works that do not often make it into other reviews of past printing practices. The book does a nice and succinct job of rapidly going through 500 years of text design (with a few title pages), giving aspiring designers inspiration, even if they are not taken with Tschichold's minimalism.

b The Swifts: Printers in the Age of Typesetting Races by Walker Rumble, University of Virginia Press, 2003.

this book is interesting, but it is not good. it suffers from a lack of editing and a decent amount of repetition – as if each chapter was written to be almost, but not quite, standalone. it does provide an interesting view in labor politics of the late 1800s and a passingly useful information on setting type. if you are just interested in learning tricks for setting faster, one is better off reviewing the notes from those who did the racing and Fritz Swanson's summary on type setting speed than tracking down a copy of this book.

b Pages from Presses I & II by David Butcher, Whittington Press, 2006 & 2022.

i go back and forth on what to say about these two volumes. clearly a tour de force – not to mention the wonderful tactility of the leaves (i brough my loupe to look at the printing, lol) – they are, however, not particularly interesting if one wants to learn about the actual physicality of the books being described. there are no pictures other than the leaves, which makes it difficult to imagine the beauty etc. of the described books without a lot of extradiagetic research. as something for an aspiring hand-printer to look at, v1 is much more useful than v2, since you get to see a wider variety of styles of printing that could be conceivably done. not to mention, personally, aesthetically, the presses of the 2nd volume do nothing for me. on a final note, should you be a non-Brit reading this, you are advised to get a deeper sense of how much a guinea is – otherwise, the prices of books will be mostly meaningless.

b Type Specimens: a Visual History of Typesetting and Printing by Dorin Griffin, Bloomsbury, 2022.

If you have managed to some how find yourself reading this paragraph having never printed, looked at a type specimen, or engaged with the world around you with a critical lens, you will find this book useful, perhaps even enlightening. But if you've spent any amount of time looking at historical type specimens, this book will eventually become a slog. It is written as if it is the main text of a freshman design textbook. All concepts, including non-printy things like colonialism, are treated with a basic and, occasionally overly infantilizing, hand. As a jumping off point for additional inquiry (e.g. if you are looking for references for a particular era of type design), it is good, but it can only barely stand as a reference itself.

b Paper & Ink: Management for fine letterpress by Graham Williams, Florin Press, 2026.

This was a much anticipated book for me, in particular due to its section on ink. I count 13 stickies indicating content of interest or that I should come back to, which at 64 pages, is a pretty decent things-of-note-to-page ration – and this doesn't include the obvious sections like the recipes on ink. This is a very worthy companion to Lewis Allen's book and easily fills the niche between his book and Rummonds' tome.

Matrix: a review for printers

i'm unlikely to say anything that hasn't already been written about Matrix, given it's beauty, size, and longevity. finding a random issue and reading it cover to cover is worth it just to get a sense of the breadth of the world of contemporary letterpress printing. of course, "contemporary" is doing a lot here: an article from the 80s is almost as alien to a letterpress practitioner in the 2020s as the 1920s. the community, the resources, and the materials have changed, but the desire to create remains.

most of the comments i take while reading are references to look up later, but a few notes refer to pages/articles that may be of interest and cannot be copied into notes elsewhere.

M36, (didn't actually have anything written down about content of the issue itself)
M35, btwn p80-81, "enjoyable little cards of whimsy"
M35, Stanley Lane insert is top-class advice on typeface choice
M34, Ornata
M33, It's Not Nostalgia by Paul Shaw, starting on p19 – good typography and examples of some fun experiments
M32, not much of note here, though did get a number of references for wood engraving books
M31, Harry Carter on Type by Martyn Thomas, good examples and fun opinions
M31, Inkunabula by Enrico Tallone, a beautiful typeface
M30, p40-45, Gaylord Schanilec on his process
M29, p48, insert with a long quote from Ecclesiasticus on trades/craft, set nicely in Janson
M29, p51, insert with Monotype italics
M28, p39, Haag-Drugulin specimens
M28, p96-97, Gill engraving samples and border specimens

hand presses

b Printing on the Handpress by Lewis M. Allen, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969.

i'll say up front that i do not have a copy of the actually printed-on-a-handpress version, so this review is based solely on the content.

to the point, then, it's good content. it's less overwhelming that Rummonds is, but also, significantly sparser. neither, unfortunately, dive into the "why" in a way that i find truly makes sense. this book says "this way works, so do it" (which is also what Rummonds says). that aside, there are still good tidbits in it – i think in particular it is useful to see an effective version of a frisket without covering it in paper. worth reading through from your library and marking down new things to try.

next step, of course, is to actually read the hand-printed version.

b The Technology of Hand Printing by Harry Duncan, Abattoir Editions, 1980.

got this rec from Rollin Milroy's blog. this essay (speech?) tries to get at a certain je ne sais quoi about printing with a hand press that i think anyone who a) has printed on a hand press and b) has read this essay probably understands. however, not sure it really comes across – this may warrant another read in a few years.

b f American Iron Hand Presses by Stephen O. Saxe, The Yellow Barn Press, 1991.

in terms of quality, the letterpress version certainly takes the cake of books on models of hand presses. it's just a joy to hold and to read – not gripping, like a thriller, but it is eminently readable. plus, i have a soft spot for engravings of hand presses, and John DePol's are nonpareil.

b On Printing by William Everson, The Book Club of California, 1992.

the book is boring, the binding & printing lackluster (bordering on bad), and i find William Everson altogether too full of himself. my main takeaway from reading this collection is that i don't want to be a catholic monk.

the beginning 2 Letters from William Everson (Anacapa Books, 1980) are fine and the pamphlet it was originally issued in is reasonable. plus, you can find the pamphlet for much cheaper than the collected book.

b A Field Guide to North American Hand Presses and Their Manufacturers by Robert Oldham, Ad Lib Press, 2006.

the latest, i believe, in a line of books about american hand presses and their makers. while not as sumptuous as Stephen Saxe's book, it is broader in scope and provides a wealth of pictures. if you are unsure about what type of press you have, this is likely to give you enough information to indentify it. an updated version would be nice. this can still be had from the Museum of Printing as of late 2024.

last updated: 2026-05-03 10:44:25