⏳ 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

By 1878 the American sign painter had a literature of his own, and Allen P. Boyce's The Art of Lettering and Sign Painter's Manual belongs to that founding generation of trade books. This is a sign painter's education as it was taught in the gaslight era: the working alphabets of the trade — Roman, Egyptian, Gothic, and fancy hands — drawn for the brush rather than the pen, with the layout rules, spacing, and panel arrangement that turned letters into signs.

The manual covers the ground every working sign painter stood on: letter construction and proportion, the single-stroke alphabets used for speed work, shaded and ornamented letters for display, and the practical shop knowledge — paints, brushes, and grounds — that let a painter take a wall, a window, or a board and leave behind a finished sign. The 1878 date places it deep in the era of the traveling sign painter and the painted wall advertisement.

For the modern letterer, the value is in the roots. The alphabets and layout principles in Boyce's manual are the direct ancestors of the forms still painted today — seeing them at the source, in their original Victorian dress, teaches proportion and rhythm in a way no modern simplification can. Collectors of antique sign painting books will prize it as one of the early American manuals.

A vintage lettering manual from the trade's formative years. For sign painters, lettering students, and collectors of the earliest American sign-painter literature.

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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1878 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 1878 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 1878 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.