⏳ 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

Charles J. Strong was one of the great teachers of the card-writing trade, and his 1907 The Art of Show Card Writing — 222 pages of instruction — was the classroom for thousands of show-card writers. The show card was the retail advertising of its age: the price tickets, sale announcements, and window displays that sold goods in every store in America. Strong's book is a complete professional education in making them: the alphabets of the card writer, brush and pen technique, spacing and layout, borders and ornament, and the color combinations that read across a crowded store.

The 1907 edition captures the trade at a turning point — the card writer's craft at full maturity, just as department stores and chain retailers were multiplying the demand for cards. The plates show the quick, readable hands for price work alongside the display letters for announcements, with step-by-step progression from simple strokes to finished cards. It is a teaching book in the truest sense, built to take a beginner to a paying professional.

Strong's reputation among collectors and working card writers rests on exactly this quality: nothing decorative for its own sake, everything aimed at the card that sells. For show-card writers, ticket writers, sign painters doing retail work, and students of lettering, the 1907 edition preserves the complete professional method at the height of the trade.

An antique show card writing book from one of the trade's master teachers. For card writers, lettering students, and collectors of the great show-card manuals.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 222 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1907 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 1907 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 1907 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.