Wood type

For types of wood, see List of woods.

Wood type in close-up

In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lighter and cheaper than large sizes of metal type.[1]

Wood has been used since the earliest days of European printing for woodcut decorations and emblems, but it was not generally used for making typefaces due to the difficulty of reproducing the same shape many times for printing. In the 1820s, Darius Wells introduced mechanised wood type production using the powered router, and William Leavenworth in 1834 added a second major innovation of using a pantograph to cut a letter's shape from a pattern. This made it possible to mass-produce the same design in wood repeatedly.[2][3][4][5][6] Wood type was manufactured and used worldwide in the nineteenth century for display use.[5]

Exhibition poster by Alan Kitching, who often uses wood type in his work[7][8][9][10][11]

In the twentieth century lithography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting replaced it as a mass-market technology. It continues to be used by hobbyists and artistic printers.

  1. ^ Shields, David. "What Is Wood Type?". Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. Archived from the original on 20 November 2021. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  2. ^ Shields, David (2008). "A Short History of the Italian". Ultrabold: The Journal of St Bride Library (4): 22–27. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
  3. ^ Ichiyama, Dennis. "2004 Friends of St Bride conference proceedings: How wood type tamed the west". Stbride.org. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
  4. ^ "Old West Reward Posters". Wildwestweb.net. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
  5. ^ a b Pané-Farré, Pierre (8 March 2021). "The case of Will & Schumacher". Klim Type Foundry. Archived from the original on 24 December 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
  6. ^ Heck, Bethany (25 August 2018). "Champion Gothic". Font Review Journal. Archived from the original on 16 August 2019. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
  7. ^ Pires, Candice (2 April 2016). "A-Z living: an inside look at typographer Alan Kitching's home". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 June 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  8. ^ ""I always try to have some logic to the job, to the work": we interview letterpress legend Alan Kitching". It's Nice That. 31 March 2016. Archived from the original on 25 June 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  9. ^ "Alan Kitching on Press at The Guardian | Newspaper Club". blog.newspaperclub.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  10. ^ Waters, John L.; Kitching, Alan (2016). A life in letterpress. Lawrence King. ISBN 978-1780674810.
  11. ^ Sinclair, Mark (22 April 2016). "Alan Kitching a life in Letterpress". Creative Review. Archived from the original on 1 July 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.