The Art & Practice of Typography / A Manual of American Printing, Including a Brief History up to the Twentieth Century, with Reproductions of the Work of Early Masters of the Craft, and a Practical Discussion and an Extensive Demonstration of the Modern Use of Type-faces and Methods of Arrangement

by Edmund G. Gress

Stationery composition of 1870

The panel as used in 1893

A neat letterhead of 1897
THE CHANGING STYLES OF COMMERCIAL HEADINGS

The type foundries helped the spread of the new typography by supplying a series of Bradley’s decorations, known as “Wayside Ornaments.”

Bradley discontinued the Wayside Press in 1898 and combined his printshop with that of the University Press at Cambridge, Mass. There a battery of presses was kept busy during the continuance of the extraordinary interest in Bradley booklets.

In 1905 Bradley impaired the strength of his following by attempting for the American Type Founders Company the introduction of a new style of typography, the prominent feature of which was profuse ornamentation. While this effort supplied job printers with many valuable ideas in type arrangement and color treatment, happily the style as a whole was not adopted by printers generally or typographic conditions might have become as unfortunate as they were previous to 1890.

Frank B. Berry, associated with Bradley during his engagement with the American Type Founders Company, tells in these words of the construction of a thirty-two-page pamphlet of specimens entitled “The Green Book of Spring”: “Starting in on this about half-past ten one morning Bradley made up a dummy, prepared the copy and laid out the work—specifying the size and style of type to be used, the form of display and designating the exact position of each ornament with the required spacing. This was in effect practically furnishing reprint copy for the compositors. Then, to ‘give good measure,’ as he expressed it, copy was prepared for the cover, and the work was ready for the printers before half-past one.”