What is Letterpress Printing?
Letterpress printing is a printing technique which has been in use in the West since the 15th Century, when it was used by Johannes Gutenberg to manufacture the Gutenberg Bible. There has been some debate over whether letterpress printing was first developed in the East or West, with some suggestions that Chinese texts were printed using a similar method before the Gutenberg Bible. Letterpress printing remained the primary way to print and distribute information until the twentieth century, when offset printing was developed. It was also an extremely important technological innovation, making printed material available to a wider range of classes of people. Letterpress printing involves locking movable type into the bed of a press, inking it, and rolling or pressing paper against it to form an impression. Predecessors of letterpress printing had been around for hundreds of years, with both East and West making prints from woodblocks and carved engravings. However, Gutenberg is usually
Letterpress is a traditional way of printing in which the raised surface of the type carries the ink and is pressed directly into the paper, creating a slightly indented print. These days, this historic printing technique is primarily used for high-quality, short-run projects and limited edition books. When you purchase a letterpress card, you hold in your hands a finely crafted printed piece.
The oldest and most versatile method of printing still in use today, the letterpress process uses metal plates with raised printing areas. Ink touches only the top surface of the raised areas, and the inked image is then transferred directly to the paper, leaving indented text and images. Sometimes a slight embossing appears on the reverse side of the paper, and the letterpress image is always sharp and crisp.
Letterpress printing is the technology for reproducing text that gave the world everything from Gutenberg’s bibles to the dinner menus on the grand ocean liners. It is the craft of pressing words and images, cast in metal or cut from wood, directly into paper. The letterforms leave their mark, adding a sensuous texture to the page and evoking things that last. Custom-designed letterpress printing from Woodside Press transforms everyday items — personal stationery, invitations, announcements, certificates — into objects to admire and save. For what is Letterpress Printing suitable? For personal stationery both formal and casual; as a distinguished gift to mark a birthday, a promotion, a new home, or to celebrate a child’s learning to write or to equip an older student going away to school. For imaginative presents tailored precisely to the recipient: personalized index cards for the inveterate recipe collector; refined personal bookplates for the serious reader amassing a library; sum
