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Stereotyping
ne of the great things about book collecting is that no matter collected and set up again; also, once the type was set up and in place,
how long you do it, one person cannot possibly know you couldn’t print anything else unless you had more type, a whole lot
Oeverything or see every book, so there are always interesting more type, and a large place to store the pages that had been set up for
and exciting things out there waiting to be discovered. Or at least us the book.
book people think so. So, the next development in printing came in the 19th century
I recently saw something that I had heard of but never expected to when someone had the bright idea to invent what is called stereotype
see and that is an actual printing stereotype plate. Few of them survived printing. In stereotype printing, once the hundreds or thousands of
because they were usually melted down and recast as other stereotype individual pieces of type had been set up for several pages, then a mold
plates when they were no longer needed. of all the type was made out of, say, plaster, then the type metal
Now for a bit of printing history. Gutenberg is credited with the (a mixture of lead and antimony) was poured into that mound to create
invention of movable metal printing type to print books in the a printing plate which could be placed in the printing press and used
mid-1400s which was probably as revolutionary and amazing then to for printing.
them as the internet was to us. The advantages of using stereo plates were that if dropped, the type
Before the invention of the printing press, the only way to make wouldn’t scatter everywhere, and the stereo plates could be easily stored
books was to copy them out in longhand, which was time-consuming for as long as there would be a demand for more copies of the book
and expensive, so that only the very rich could afford one book, let and in the meantime, those individual pieces of type could be used to
alone a library of books. print other things or to make
But after Gutenberg invented metal moveable other stereotype plates. Some
type, tiny letters of the early books even have a state-
alphabet were carved usually ment that bragged that they
out of wood, in reverse, and were printed by the stereotype
then used to create a metal printing process.
casting of an image of the So, finally, we are coming
letter then made in metal. to the point which is, while
Then, when you had multiple I’ve heard of stereotype print-
copies of each letter, you ing plates, you very seldom see
could place them one at a one because when they came
time and copy a page of a to the end of their useful life,
manuscript. Then the pieces of they would normally be
type could be locked in place in melted down for scrap or to
a tray, inked, then the paper be used to make other stereo-
would be pressed against the type printing plates.
inked type in a printing press, So imagine my excite-
and when you peeled away the ment when my friend and
paper there was your printed fellow Thoreau collector
page. While the type was in Henrik actually found an
place, it could be reused as many actual stereotype printing
times as needed to print many plate that was used to print
copies of that page from that set- the title page of Summer
ting of type. Then the metal type from the Concord Edition of Thoreau’s Works
would be redistributed back in the published in 1908! And as Henrik had the stereo printing plate in his
drawers of type and then reused to print the next page, and so forth, and collection and I just happened to have the exact edition with that actual
so on until you had all the pages to assemble and bind to make a book. page printed from that same stereotype plate in a book in my collection,
It was labor-intensive to get all the type set up on the tray, but once we got the two together for the accompanying photograph where we
that was done, you could print the pages a whole lot faster than they have placed the stereo printing plate next to the page that was printed
could each be individually copied by hand. from it.
Although I have simplified the process somewhat because actually, Pretty neat, huh? Or at least book people like us would think so.
they could usually print several pages of a book at a time, this was how But of course, these days, when stereotype printing has long been
printing was done for the first 400 years or so. Now the drawbacks of forgotten, to stereotype someone would almost be an insult, but
printing directly from moveable type on a tray were that if you dropped it worked great for printing. But times change along with printing
the tray, the type would scatter everywhere and it would have to be methods and meanings of words.

James Dawson has owned and operated the Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe, MD since 1975, when he decided that it would be more fun to buy and sell old books and
maps than to get a “real” job. For a born collector like Jim, having a shop just might be another excuse to buy more books. He has about 30,000 second hand and
rare books on the shelves, and just about all subjects are represented. He can be contacted at P.O. Box 154; Trappe, MD 21673; 410-476-3838;
unicornbookshopMD@gmail.com; www.unicornbookshop.com

36 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles