Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce's New York Type Foundry [with supplements 1-5]; [bound with] De Vinne, Theo. L.: The Invention of Printing. A collection of Facts and Opinions.Illustrated With Fac-Similes of Early Types and Wood-cuts

Published by New York: George Bruce's Son, 1878. 1883. 1884. 1885. 1886. 1887

About this Item

Hardcover. Small folio (12" x 9.5"), later red library buckram with gilt title at spine and "Franklin Institute" blind stamped at upper cover. Frontis.; Supplements: 353-376 pp.; Specimens of Printing Types: 352 pp.; The Invention of Printing: 168 pp. CONDITION: Very good; blind-stamp and perforated stamp of Franklin Institute on general title page; blind-stamp, perforated stamp, and offsetting from portrait to 1st Supplement title page, occasional inconspicuous blind-stamps at edges of a few leaves, faint smudging to leaf 129, light vertical creases in leaves 302 and 303, 1 cm tear in top margin of leaves 329 and 330; perforated stamp to lower right corner of leaves 149 and 159 of The Invention of Printing, creases to upper right corners and a few small stains to several leaves of The Invention of Printing, with small losses to a few corners, as well as 3 cm tear in bottom margin of leaf 5, 3 cm tear in top margin of leaves 30, 50, and 66, and light general soiling to terminal leaf (168); otherwise clean, crisp, and attractive throughout, all printing intact (no clippings or other losses to printing), all in all a very appealing and firmly bound example. First edition of one of the finest American type specimens of the 19th Century. David Wolfe Bruce was the son of the important Scottish-American printer George Bruce (1781-1866)-credited as the first to try standardizing type sizes in America-and the nephew of David Bruce, whose type casting machine "mechanized the entire industry" (Annenberg, p. 72). Bruce assumed the management of his father's New York type foundry following the latter's death in 1866. At this time, as Annenberg notes, "The Civil War was just over, the industrial and mechanization period had just started, and there was a great demand for type and printing machinery.the Bruce foundry furnished special types that could be used in machinery that would eliminate hand typesetting" (p. 82). This is the first of two type specimen books into which Bruce incorporated his friend Theodore Low De Vinne's book The Invention of Printing-a discussion of, among other early printing topics, "the legend of Lourens Janszoon Coster, of Haarlem," who claimed to have developed movable type at the same time as Gutenberg. De Vinne (1828-1914) was an immensely successful printer and a founder of the Grolier Club, for which he served as printer for two decades. According to Annenberg, Bruce "always termed this catalog the crowning work of his career" (Annenberg, pp. 79-87). REFERENCES: Maurice Annenberg, Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs (1974).

Seller Inventory # 4063

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce's New York Type Foundry [with supplements 1-5]; [bound with] De Vinne, Theo. L.: The Invention of Printing. A collection of Facts and Opinions.Illustrated With Fac-Similes of Early Types and Wood-cuts
• Publisher: New York: George Bruce's Son, 1878. 1883. 1884. 1885. 1886. 1887
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • Printing & Printing History