A tour de force of typographic design and a celebration of American printing innovation, A Specimen of Wood Type is a hand-bound, hardcover letterpress printed book by Richard Kegler. It features 26 wood type specimens hand-printed between January 2017 and October 2020 using the original wood types referenced to digitize the Hamilton Wood Type Collection (HWT) from P22 Type Foundry. Multicolor innovative layouts highlight the type designs printed with the actual wood type used to make these revivals are paired up with accompanying descriptive text that was set and cast in metal type by the celebrated Press & Letterfoundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler of Skaneateles, NY.
Richard Kegler printed the specimens using vintage wood type collections at six locations across the USA. These include the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum (Two Rivers, WI); Wells Book Arts Center (Aurora, NY); RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection (Rochester, NY); the Western New York Book Arts Center (Buffalo, NY); Flower City Arts Center (Rochester, NY); and P22 Press (Rochester, NY). The typographic showings vary from one to three colors each for a total of 82 press runs.
The Book Edition is case-sewn and bound by Kegler in deep-red Asahi book cloth with gold foil-stamping (No. 1–37) or in yellow-orange Asahi book cloth with black foil-stamping (No. 38–75). Each book uses unique makeready sheets with multiple layers of ink as end-papers. The covers are foil-stamped with the Hamilton Wood Type Collection ‘H’ logo at Boxcar Press in Syracuse, NY. This hand-made case bound edition is limited to 75 copies total.
A small Folio Box Edition of 20 unbound copies is also available. These were printed as single-sided, unpaginated sheets—suitable for framing—and are presented in a custom clamshell box bound in blue Asahi cloth made by book artist Leah Mackin.
This is a unique document of this important era in American graphic design and printing history—A Specimen of Wood Type is sure to inspire designers of all disciplines and aficionados of the printing arts.
Book Edition:
• P22 Publications; First Edition (2020)
• Slightly oversized Quarto: 9.5 × 12.5 inches
• 26 wood type specimens
• 56 pages
• 100lb Arjowiggins Utopia 2 Ivory Matte text paper
• 82 hand-press runs in six different print shops
• Hand-bound in Asahi cloth (red or orange)
• Foil-stamped cover (gold on red or black on orange)
• Signed and numbered
• Edition of 75
Folio Edition:
Same as Book Edition except:
• Specimens and descriptions unbound as individual one-sided plates
• Box hand-bound in blue Asahi cloth with gold foil and spine label
• Edition of 20