The Printer in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg / An Account of His Life & Times, & of His Craft

by Parke Rouse

AN
INQUIRY
INTO THE
Rights of the BRITISH Colonies,

Intended as an Anſwer to

The Regulations lately made concerning the Colonies, and the Taxes impoſed upon them conſidered.

In a Letter addreſſed to the Author of that Pamphlet.

By RICHARD BLAND, of Virginia.

Dedit omnibus Deus pro virili portione ſapientiam, ut et inaudita inveſtigare poſſent et audita perpendere. Lactantius.

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WILLIAMSBURG:
Printed by Alexander Purdie, & C^o.
MDCCLXVI.

Here the printer and his helpers set type, pull proofs and correct their galleys, make up pages on the marble imposing stone, prepare paper and ink, run off the job on one or more of the presses, and finally, redistribute the type to the cases. The printed sheets, in the meantime, may have to be hung on ceiling racks to allow both ink and paper to dry out.

In the small back shop, a separate building, the similarly cluttered bookbinding shop may be found. In it the bookbinder of today, working with the tools and methods of his eighteenth-century predecessors, sews together the printed and folded signatures that make a book, binds them in boards, and covers the boards—perhaps in elegantly decorated leather bindings. He may use marbled paper of his own making for end-papers or on the outer covers of smaller books. For tooling and lettering the cover he has a collection of brass dies, some of which are designed from lettering stamps excavated in the vicinity of his—and William Parks’s workshop.