COP Practical- Letterpress History

Letterpress printing is a relief printing process, which initially utilized raised metal type and engravings to imprint words and designs on a page.

Letterpress originated in the 1400s and was the primary form of printing and communication for more than 500 years. For centuries it was the primary method of publishing books, but over time it has evolved into an art form more than a standard printing practice. Now, letterpress printing allows modern printers to create commercial works that have an appealing tactile quality in comparison to current offset and digital printing methods.

When Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, his goal was to bring books to the common people. In the decades just preceding the 1440s, printing of any kind required craftsmen to carve entire pages of text into wooden blocks. Once the text was carved, the space around the letters had to be whittled away so the text was the only surface that would touch the page. The blocks would then be inked and paper placed on top, and rubbing the paper onto the wood would create an impression. Each page required its own wooden block, which was a time-consuming and difficult process. However, wood-block printing did allow books to be copied more easily than the earlier method of transcribing by hand.

Gutenberg’s efforts to create an easier way of printing took an extensive amount of time and funding. It is believed that his first forays, between the 1430s and 1440s, were through his own version of wood-block printing, with individual, reusable letters carved into wood blocks instead of entire words or pages. This allowed for a movable type, where individual letters could be used to form words for one page of print, then taken apart and re-ordered to create the next. While this method was a significant improvement on wood-block page printing, the wooden letters did not print with clarity, so Gutenberg began working with metal type instead.

The metal type included individual capital and lowercase letters, as well as punctuation symbols; these characters’ reverse impressions (or “mirror images”) were cast in steel. Letters and symbols could then be assembled on a wooden forme to create entire pages of text, complete with spacers and lead rules for legibility. In order to transfer these impressions from forme to page, Gutenberg used a lacquer-like ink he created himself out of soot, walnut oil and turpentine.

Gutenberg’s printing press was called a “screw press” or handpress, and allowed ink to transfer evenly between the page and the forme. With this new way to print, Gutenberg could print books at a rate of approximately six pages per day. His most notable print job was a copy of the Bible, which was 42 lines of text in two columns on each page, and consisted of two volumes that totaled 1,282 pages — a task that took a staff of 20 and two to three years (between 1452 and 1454/1455) to complete. One hundred eighty copies were made of this Bible, and 48 copies can still be found in museums today.