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The Virgin Wood Type Bible enables the reader to identify over five hundred historic wood type designs while gaining insight into their history. The author has located and researched all of the known printed catalogs from the original makers, as well as considered physical clues on the over three hundred fonts represented in the Virgin Wood Type Pattern Library. These include patterns from Acme; American; Allied; Empire; and some from Stephenson, Blake, who had a US distribution agreement with American Wood Type. Also included are new fonts made by Virgin Wood Type, designed by the author and others, which often draw on historical models.

The book contains a brief history of Virgin Wood Type and its predecessors. The bulk of the book is a comparative specimen of the fonts known to be manufactured by all five of these companies. Over 400 individual type specimens are shown plus several pages of ornaments and sorts. The type specimens are arranged by styles to allow comparison of the various version of similar fonts made by these manufacturers. There are descriptions for each of the style groupings, and captions on almost every specimens detailing the origin of the type designs. Appendixes with additional information about the makers and their type specimen books, and an index to allow you to easily look up any font by name or company of origin.

This book is intended as resource for not only letterpress printers, but also industrial, graphic, and typographic historians, graphic and type designers, and anyone who just loves letters. This book hopes to fill in a neglected gap in twentieth century wood type history, and help the reader to better understand and identify wood type fonts from this era.

James Grieshaber has been a designer for newspaper and advertising agencies and a type designer for P22 Type Foundry, Typeco, where he has made fonts for Monotype, Google, and Apple. He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology where he has taught typography. Working as a wood type designer and fabricator for Virgin Wood Type, Grieshaber cleaned, cataloged, and identified all the wood type patterns in their collection, which led him to create this book. 

Publisher: Typeco Publications

Publication date: ‎January, 2025

Language: ‎English

Print length: ‎126 pages

ISBN-13: ‎979-8-9916515-1-6

Dimensions: ‎8.5 x 11 inches

Format: Softcover, with French flaps