Before union cards, which identified printers as working for a particular firm, there were printers' medals,which usually had the name or number of the journeyman printer stamped on them. These were issued by various printers' guilds, such as those that flourished among the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries. All of these medals being one-of-a-kind, they are understandably quite rare today. We suspect very few folks building a private library about printing have ever even seen one. Fortunately, fine press printer Henry Morris (Bird & Bull Press) has, and he has written a book about the subject, which book includes reproductions (cast in silver) of four such medals:
Printers' medals also have been cast for other purposes, such as to promote or commemorate various printers. William Blades is the author most associated with catalogs of this type of material, in books like Numismata Typographica: or, The Medallic History of Printing, which Henry Morris also has published in an expensive (1992) reprint for folks who cannot afford the rare first edition (shown below):
Another catalog of this type of material, which is almost as rare as a first edition Blades (it is, in fact, based on Numismata Typographica), is the 1907 German-language publication über buchdruck-medaillen by Paul Jehne, which fortunately also has been made available in an inexpensive (1992) reprint :
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