A Textbook on Show-Card Writing (1903) — Hardcover Reprint

? 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

The show card was the silent salesman of the 1903 storefront — and this 364-page International Correspondence Schools Textbook on Show-Card Writing was the correspondence course that taught men to make them. Written for the student learning by mail, it is a complete education in the card writer's craft: lettering with pen and brush, price tickets, sale announcements, and the window cards that moved merchandise.

The lessons cover the alphabets the card writer lived by — quick, readable hands for price work and display letters for announcements — along with borders, panels, and ornament that frame a card, color combinations that catch the eye from the sidewalk, and layouts sized for the standard card stocks of the day. Every lesson is built for distance learning: clear, sequential, and meant to be practiced until the hand obeys.

Show-card writing was one of the steadiest livings in the lettering trades — every retailer needed cards, constantly — and this textbook preserves the professional method in full: how to letter fast without looking hurried, how to make a price ticket legible at twenty feet, and how to turn out a window display's worth of cards in a day's work.

For show-card writers and ticket writers keeping the craft alive, sign painters who letter retail work, lettering students, and collectors of trade-school books. The 1903 card writer's whole working method, lesson by lesson.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 364 pages, 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1903 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 1903 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 1903 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.