As we have noted previously (see, for example, our posts of 7 September 2009, 8 July 2010, 12 October 2010 and 15 November 2010), there is a great deal of ephemera associated with book collecting. Much of this ephemera is quite small -- trade/business cards, bookmarks, stationery, printers' medals, booksellers' tokens, etc. You'll find excellent examples of many of these at Exile Bibliophile. Also, Book Hunter's Holiday and BookTryst, among several other blogs that come immediately to mind, have posted about biblio-ephemera on a number of occasions -- a search on "ephemera" will bring up the relevant posts.
It is not this small stuff, however, with which our post today is concerned. It's the big stuff ... the really big stuff! We're talking broadsides and posters. 'Cause this type of biblio-ephemera is one of the few places left where the average book collector is likely to encounter letterpress printing from wood type in the sizes in which this type actually was cut:
As can be seen above (image via the Leeds Playbill Gallery), the largest sizes of wood type were cut for use on circus posters, playbills, billboards and the like:
The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin (from whence come the circus images above), is the only museum we know of that is devoted exclusively to the preservation and study of wood type in all of its various manifestations. The museum's founding type collection came from the Hamilton Wood Type Company, founded in 1880 and at one point the largest manufacturer of wood type in the United States. The museum is in fact staffed with a number of former employees of this company, which closed its doors in 1985. A recent movie about the company's death, and it's eventual re-birth in museum form, is available here (wood type poster below):
The museum has a very nice introduction to wood type here, wherein it notes that
[w]ith the expansion of the commercial printing industry in America in the first years of the 19th century, it was inevitable that someone would perfect a process for cheaply producing the large letters so in demand for broadsides. Wood was the logical material because of it's lightness, availability, and known printing qualities.
Darius Wells of New York found the means for mass producing letters in 1827, and published the first known wood type catalog in 1828. The usual procedure was to draw the letter on wood, or paper which was pasted to the wood. Then cut around the letter with a knife or graver, gouging out the parts to be left blank.
Wells however, introduced a basic invention, the lateral router that, in combination with a pantograph introduced by William Leavenworth in 1834 constituted the essential material for mass-producing wood type.
In the preface to his first wood type catalog, Wells outlined the advantages of wood type. They were half the cost of metal type and when prepared by machine they had smooth, even surfaces. Unequal cooling causes large lead type to distort....
Book collectors who would like to add specimens of this type of printing to their bookshelves, but who are reluctant to cope with the storage demands of items like posters and broadsides, should recall that most of these type manufacturers, like their metal type counterparts, produced type specimen books. Although Fine copies of such books tend to be quite scarce and expensive, the presswork within usually is worth the time and expense of trying to ferret them out. Thankfully, Unicorn Graphics has digitized a few of these specimen books for its Web Museum of Wood Types and Ornaments, from whence come the images below (Hamilton Wood Type Catalog #14:)
The real wood type devotees out there will want to add WoodTyper to their blogrolls. And they also will want to add the titles below to their bookshelves:
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