This site may be going away; please consider the Donate link above... or LiberaPay:
A huge thank you to all who donated in 2025; 2026 Q1 Web hosting 0 / $400; planning a move to much cheaper hosting this quarter.
Pictures from The Pentateuch of Printing with a Chapter on Judges by William Blades (1824 – 1890), Typographer, Chicago, 1891; I have added the captions.
Title: Pentateuch of Printing with a Chapter on Judges
Published by: A.C.M. McCLVRG & Co.
City: Chicago
Date: 1891
Total items: 21
Out of copyright (called public domain in the USA), hence royalty-free for all purposes usage credit requested, or as marked.
Fifteenth Century Wooden Composing Stick
“Standing in front of the case, the compositor held in his left hand a wooden “composing-stick,” in which a rectangular trench had been cut to receive the [more...] [$]
A naughty cherub makes handprints on everything, including his naked companion [$]
The “lay” of a pair of type cases (upper case).
This is the top half of the figure, the upper case. In the actual type tray, individual sorts, or pieces of type, would be stored in the compartment indicated. Note that the actual compartments are open; a type tray generally does not have a lid, so you had to learn where the letters went. [more...] [$]
Two tiny cherubs on the spine of an a book. They face away from us. [$]
Note: If you got here from a search engine and don’t see what you were looking for, it might have moved onto a different page within this gallery.