Talk:Letterpress printing

North American Craft Revival
I'm thinking about making two edits on the page. Creating a new category from the 1.2 subcategory where the "Rise of craft letterpress and revival" is discussed. I think this topic is much bigger, and could use more relevant information. This new category would discuss the contemporary developments, and the modern use of letterpress as art and "craft".

I also think that there is more information about the history of letterpress within a North American context.--Mdblackmore (talk) 11:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Postal Use
This should make reference to at least the much older use where a person's ring, mark or postal hand stamp is used to mark an object. This pre-dates Guttenburg by hundereds of years in Europe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.149.211.131 (talk) 15:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Frisket Merge
Against. Frisket film is also a material that is used in general 2D art applications. Ugh. Just found frisket (airbrush). --Mrs Scarborough 04:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Not sure why this is in Printmaking category?
Johnbod 04:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

From the article: "'the term letterpress can also refer to the direct impression of inked media such as zinc 'cuts' (plates) or linoleum blocks onto a receptive surface.'" Last I checked, lino cuts (along with resingrave and woodblock, both of which I have printed in combination with movable type on a relief press) are part of printmaking. Littlerubberfeet (talk) 03:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Rotary Letterpress section needs editing, pruning IMHO
This section is not well written. The information is useful, particularly as a balance to the predominance of 'craft' letterpress info, but it is lacking in clarity, uses unfamiliar jargon and awkward syntax. No disrespect meant to the contributor(!), but perhaps we could rework this a bit?

Pfraterdeus (talk) 13:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Pictures
A couple of pictures of actual letterpress might help the visually ignorant like me to understand what te term means. ThanksCampolongo (talk) 08:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Printing in Asia
This article significantly differs from its Japanese version where it is clearly described (with citations to reliable sources) that there excited letterpress printing in China and Korea much earlier than Johannes Gutenberg "invented". I have put similar remark in the article of Johannes Gutenberg, but unfortunately there is no any response. --79.244.30.126 (talk) 16:15, 25 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, this article is much too American-centric, and omits revivals elsewhere. Jamesmcardle(talk) 23:06, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Categorization question for Wikimedia Commons
I'm trying to synchronize and improve the categorization structure over at the Wikimedia Commons, and since posting in category talk pages is rather futile, I will post them here: what is the term for the physical press, a letterpress? If so, is the plural letterpresses? Morgan Riley (talk) 22:49, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit requested on February 11
It seems inconsistent to not mention the Texas A&M University - Commerce in the first paragraph in the the Current Initiatives section while there are images posted from their downtown Dallas location. The school offers a wide variety of text/font related courses in digital and analog form.
 * Give us a reliable source confirming that Texas A&M offers these courses and we'll consider adding your suggestion. Thanks, Altamel (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Gutenberg a.k.a Charles Worrall?
Opening section, third paragraph, first sentence: "Letterpress printing was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg a.k.a Charles Worrall in the mid-15th century..." Can anybody show that Johannes Gutenberg is also known as Charles Worrall? There's no in-line citation here, and Gutenberg's page doesn't mention such a pseudonym. (If instead of "a.k.a." the contributor meant to say "or," then who is Charles Worrall?)Alianoraree (talk) 07:39, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Photo etch/photo engraving/photogravure
Photo etch is referenced in the first paragraph. Is this much the same thing as photo engraving and photogravure? What interests me is that I believe all three would be intaglio processes. If so, then these printers were able to print in both intaglio and relief (letterpress) simultaneously? Hard to picture how that works. I've done traditional artistic etching (intaglio). You push ink down into the grooves and then spend a long time wiping excess ink off of the top surface of the plate before printing. How that process could be automated and not result in ink smears everywhere is hard to picture. But since greyscale images appeared in newspapers, they must have been made with intaglio plates, since to my knowledge you can't produce greyscale images in relief printing (if anyone knows different I'd be interested). Of course you can also produce greyscale with offset lithography, but that would not be combined with letterpress, to my knowledge. Kawfmin (talk) 14:22, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

But if I'm right that a "photo etch" plate would be intaglio, then the second paragraph needs to be revised to make this clear. As of now, the article describes photo etch as a relief process. Kawfmin (talk) 14:42, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Actually I think a photo-etch or photo-engraving plate can be either relief or intaglio. And you can get a grayscale effect from a relief photo-etch/engraving plate. Which must be how it worked when newspapers were printed in letterset with grayscale pics. Kawfmin (talk) 14:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

"Imposition" section
The second paragraph of the "Imposition" section is in very poor shape; the sentences are illogical to the point of being meaningless. There seems to have been either some very destructive editing or an incompetent original author. I can't fix it because I can't even figure out what it was supposed to mean. TooManyFingers (talk) 22:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Any better now? Imposition has its own article so I saw no reason to keep any of the flagged stuff. The rest looks reasonably ok to me. -- asilvering (talk) 23:45, 27 November 2021 (UTC)