⏳ 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

Practical Carriage and Wagon Painting by M. C. Hillick, 1898. The 19th-century carriage painter's complete trade manual — back in print.

Before automobiles, every carriage, wagon, and sleigh wore the painter's work, and this antique sign painting book is the manual that taught the trade. Hillick covers the whole craft start to finish: preparing woodwork, priming and filling, rubbing down, mixing colors, varnishing — and the decorative work that set a good shop apart, including striping, lining, lettering, and ornamenting carriages and wagons in the style of the 1890s.

For the modern pinstriper, this book is a goldmine: carriage striping is where the American striping tradition was born, and the vehicle lettering instruction covers the horse-drawn era directly — the ancestor of today's truck and van lettering. The 192 pages are packed with shop-tested methods, color guidance, and the kind of practical detail only a working tradesman would think to write down.

An essential reference for pinstripers, vehicle letterers, restoration painters, and anyone who wants to understand where striping really came from.

Back in print as a hardcover built to last on the shop shelf.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 192 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1898 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 1898 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 1898 manual 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.