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About this book

Illustrated Catalog: Letterer's, Sign-Painter's and Show Card Writer's Supplies, 1908. The Detroit School of Lettering supply catalog — back in print.

The Detroit School of Lettering taught the trade by mail, and this 1908 catalog sold its students everything they needed: brushes, paints, pens, show card writing supplies, and sign-painter's materials — illustrated throughout, with prices. It is the material culture of the lettering trade in a 30-page booklet: what the tools looked like, what they cost, and where a 1908 student bought them.

For the vintage lettering manual collector, it is the perfect companion to the instruction books — the manuals teach the hand, this catalog shows the tools. For the show card writing enthusiast, the supplies on these pages are the very ones the great show-card books assume. A scarce piece of trade ephemera from the height of the correspondence-school era.

The sign painter's shopping list, circa 1908 — reproduced complete.

Details: PDF digital download, 30 pages.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a digital edition scanned from a historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1908 printing, and the quality of your download 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 1908 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 1908 manual with all its character intact, you're in the right place.