Victorian Printer by Graham Hudson

Victorian Printer by Graham Hudson

This is the story of printing between 1800 and the early 1900's, a period that brought great changes to the trade. The wooden hand press was replaced by the iron press, it in turn to be supplanted by platen and cylinder machines which afforded precise reigister and colouring working. The plain Roman types of the eighteenth century gave way to characterful fat faces and Egyptians, and with the art-printing movement of the 1880's tyography became ever more complex. In decorative printing the century began with the engraved copper plate supreme, but by mid-century engraving was in decline, supplanted by lithography, which was to facilitate colour printing of great quality through the chromolitho process. The printer of 1800 could be jack of several different trades, printer of everything from handbills to books and newspapers, and likely as not grocer and travel agent as well. But the new century brought increasing specialism, so that by c. 1860 book, newspaper and jobbing printing were virtually separate trades, and it is with the last - the printing of tradesman's cards and billheads, music covers, playbills, greeting cards and other ephemera - that this book is chiefly concerned.