⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 3–4 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Hardcover binding takes longer than paperback. Please allow 3–4 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

F. H. Atkinson was one of the giants of the sign and show-card literature — and A Show At Sho' Cards (1918), written with G. W. Atkinson, is the Atkinsons' big book of the card writer's craft. The title's old trade spelling ('sho' cards') tells you this book comes from inside the trade, and the contents prove it: a full education in show-card writing, from the first brush strokes through the working alphabets to complete finished cards ready for the store window.

The book covers the ground the professional card writer stood on: card alphabets in the quick readable hands and the bold display hands, price tickets and sale announcements, borders and ornament, color combinations that carry across a store, and the layout sense that turns a blank card into a selling message. The Atkinson name on a show-card book was a guarantee — Frank Atkinson's sign-painting books were the standard texts of the trade — and this volume brings that authority to the card writer's bench.

The 1918 date gives the plates the flavor of the late 1910s retail world: the department stores, the war-bond drives, the great age of the hand-lettered window. For show-card writers and ticket writers today, it is a deep well of period alphabets and layouts; for sign painters, the bridge between sign work and card work by one of the trade's master teachers.

A landmark show-card book by the trade's most famous author family. For card writers, sign painters, and collectors of the Atkinson books.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1918 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1918 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1918 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.