Letterpress is the technique that first put the printed word into the hands of millions. It is a form of relief printing: the letters and images stand up in relief on the printing surface, are coated with ink, and are pressed firmly onto paper. For roughly five centuries letterpress was simply how almost everything was printed, from Bibles and newspapers to posters and tickets. Today it has been reborn as a prized craft, loved for the crisp detail and the tactile, pressed-in feel of its impression. It belongs to the same family as the woodcut and the linocut, which share its core idea of inking a raised surface.
How letterpress works
Where a woodcut or lino block is carved by hand, a traditional letterpress image is assembled from ready-made pieces of metal or wooden type. Printing a page follows a few clear stages:
- Composing: the printer picks individual letters from a type case and sets them into words and lines, building up the text by hand, or later on a typesetting machine.
- Lock-up: the type and any blocks are arranged and wedged tight inside a metal frame called a chase, using spacing pieces (furniture) and expanding clamps (quoins). The locked-up block of type is called a forme.
- Inking: a roller coats the raised surface with a thin, even film of ink, leaving the recessed areas clean.
- Impression: paper is pressed against the inked forme on a press, transferring the image. The same forme can print a whole run of identical sheets.
Everything that prints has to be exactly the same height, known as type-high (0.918 inches, about 23.3 mm), so that type, blocks and plates all meet the paper evenly.
Letterpress and the relief printing family
Letterpress, the woodcut and the linocut all work on the same principle: ink sits on a raised surface, while the cut-away or lower areas stay blank. The difference is how the image is made. In woodcut and lino the artist carves the picture into a single block, whereas letterpress builds it from many small, reusable pieces of type and from separate image blocks locked together. Because everything is type-high, a carved lino or wood block can even be printed alongside text on the same press. If a term is unfamiliar, our printmaking glossary explains the basics.
A world-changing history
Movable type was born in the East. Around 1040 the Chinese artisan Bi Sheng created movable type from baked clay, and Korean printers later cast type in metal; the Korean book Jikji, printed in 1377, is the oldest surviving book made with movable metal type. In Europe, Johannes Gutenberg brought the pieces together around the 1440s, pairing metal type with an oil-based ink and a screw press adapted from the wine press. His famous Gutenberg Bible followed around 1455, and within fifty years printing workshops had opened in every major European city.
For the next few centuries, printing was done on hand presses, with two people working first a wooden and later an iron press. The nineteenth century industrialised the craft with powered presses, and from the 1890s hot-metal machines such as the Linotype and Monotype set type automatically, letting newspapers and books be produced at enormous speed.
From industry to art
In the middle of the twentieth century, faster and cheaper offset lithography gradually replaced letterpress for everyday commercial printing. But the craft never disappeared. From the 1980s a revival took hold, powered by photopolymer plates that let printers turn a digital design into a relief plate using light and water, without casting metal type. Classic presses like the Vandercook and the Chandler & Price found a new generation of owners, and letterpress became popular for wedding invitations, stationery and fine-art editions.
The revival also changed the look. Traditionally printers aimed for a light "kiss" impression that barely marked the paper. Many of today's makers do the opposite, pressing hard into thick, soft cotton paper for a deep, tactile debossed impression you can feel with a fingertip.
Materials and tools
A letterpress setup is more involved than carving a lino block, but the essentials are:
- Metal or wooden type, or a modern photopolymer plate made from a digital design.
- A press, from a small tabletop platen to a cylinder proof press.
- Furniture, quoins and a chase to lock everything securely in place.
- Stiff, tacky relief ink and rollers, or a hand brayer, to charge the surface evenly.
- Soft, uncoated paper, such as cotton rag, which takes a crisp impression.
Getting started with letterpress
Letterpress asks for more space and equipment than most relief techniques, so many people begin by exploring relief printing first. Carving and printing a simple block-print stamp, or following our step-by-step guide for beginners, teaches the same inking and printing skills on a smaller budget. From there you can move up to printmaking presses and heavier supplies. The friendly cousins linocut and woodcut are great places to build confidence, and the glossary is always there for the words you meet along the way.