In some ways, The Art of Wood Type is this generation’s American Wood Type. The book starts off with some scattered history on wood type and features some artists who use letterpress blocks to print and as art in and of themselves. The back half of the book is dedicated to photos of wood type alphabets and vector recreations of the prints. The book features some very rare ornamental typefaces, ...

While not explicitly a letterpress book, New Vintage Type has loads of excellent examples of the current design applications of wood type. The book is divided into sections, one for victorian ornamental type, one for the meaty wood types, “modern” art deco styles, and so on. I like that the book has a fair amount of information about each piece instead of just slapping huge images on the pages. The ...

Rob Roy Kelly’s American Wood Type remains the bible for wood type despite being published decades ago. Mr. Kelly compiled a detailed history of different wood type foundries, faces and trends, marking yearly trends and giving specimens of hundreds of typefaces. The back of the book has dozens of full page specimen sheets of a wide variety of alphabets. Consider yourself lucky if you can get your hands on a ...

When I purchased this book, all I was expecting was some nice eye candy and a little bit of history. Man, was I surprised when I finally got my hands on it. This book has the eye candy, of course, but the writing and design of the book itself are just as fantastic. The amount of research that must have gone into this book is mind boggling, and it really ...