Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (4I4r)

Since intaglio plates were printed separately from letterpress sheets, books often included notes to the binder describing where the illustrations should go. As is typical, these instructions appear on the very last printed page of the book, here facing the subject index; you can see the ink from the index text off-set in the blank areas of this page.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (4I4v)

This blank verso unsurprisingly shows bleed-through from the recto's errata list and binder instructions. But it also shows off-set ink from the index: notice the columns of text and the heading. If you look closely above the bleed-through of "Directions" you can see a series of numbers starting "263, 300, 304"; next to the bleed-through you can see a series of "S"s lined up vertically, suggesting that this is part of the "S" entries. If you turn to sig. 4I1r, you'll see an entry for John Skelton that matches these characteristics. In a quarto, pages 1r and 4v are both on the outer forme, and so when those sheets were hung to dry, the ink from one page could easily transfer to another, as we see here.

Cato, Moral distichs, 1735 (A1v-A2r)

On the blank page shown here, you can see the raised letters from the impression of the type used for the title page.

Collaert, Nova Reperta, 1600 (pl. 19)

In this depiction of copper engraving, you can see the full range of activities involved in printing an engraving. In the background a sheet of copper is being flattened and prepared for engraving; in the lower right, boys are being taught how to use a burin to draw on a plate; in the middle men are inking and preparing a plate for printing; on the left, a man is turning the wheel of a rolling press to print a plate; and in the background, finished prints are being hung to dry.

Collaert, Nova Reperta, 1600 (pl. 4)

In this illustration from the series The Inventions of Modern Times, you can see the full range of activities associated with common-press printing, from delivering blank paper to proofreading printed sheets.

Coronelle Romaine, matrices

These are matrices---the pieces of copper that are the molds used to produce pieces of type---used for the typeface Coronelle Romaine. If you zoom in, you can see the nicks at the bottom of the matrices used to orient them in the mold and the individual letter forms, as well as ligatures (joined letters), numbers, and assorted other characters. Stamps made to illustrate this typeface can be seen here.

Coronelle Romaine, stamps

These stamps illustrate the forms of individual sorts of the typeface Coronelle Romaine, designed by Hendrik van den Keere in the early 1570s. You can see the matrices for casting these sorts here.

Coronelle Romaine, unjustified matrices

These matrices have not yet been justified: they've been struck with the various letterforms and glyphs, but the resulting pieces of copper haven't been made uniform and ready to use. If you compare these matrices with the finished ones, you can easily see the difference.

Encyclopédie plates, 1769 (vol 7, pl 14)

An illustration of a pressroom: on the left the paper is being placed on the tympan while the type is being inked; on the right a separate press is being pulled while the beater works the ink in the background. At the bottom of the page is a top-down view of the press showing how a quarto imposition looks on the press stone and how it is inked on the paper held on the tympan.

Encyclopédie, Plates, 1769 (vol 7, pl 1)

An illustration of compositors working along with detailed pictures of pieces of type.