One Hundred Alphabets for the Show Card Writer (1919) — Paperback Reprint

? PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 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. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

One hundred alphabets. Zero excuses for a dull card. This 1919 pattern book, One Hundred Alphabets for the Show Card Writer, is exactly what its title promises: a working show card writer's arsenal of letterforms — display alphabets, text hands, fancy and shaded styles — ready to be copied straight onto the card.

Pattern books like this lived on the card writer's bench, open flat and paint-spattered, consulted a dozen times a day. Need a bold headline alphabet for a sale card? Turn the page. A delicate script for a millinery announcement? Turn the page. The 100-alphabet format gave the working letterer instant variety without redrawing the same standbys — and gave beginners a complete education in commercial letterform design just by copying.

For today's hand letterers, sign painters, chalk artists, and tattoo designers, this 1919 collection is a goldmine of period letterforms. Every alphabet is a starting point: copy it faithfully for restoration work, or adapt its bones for modern lettering with genuine vintage character. Collectors of antique lettering books value the anonymous pattern books precisely because they show what the trade actually used.

Whether you letter by brush, pen, or chalk, One Hundred Alphabets puts a century of commercial lettering at your fingertips. The card writer's classic, back in print.

Details: 6×9" paperback, 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1919 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 1919 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 1919 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.