⏳ 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

Richard Otto Bersick's 1905 Practical Show Card Writer is exactly what its title promises — the practical book for the working card writer, with the emphasis on work. Published when every retail store in America needed a constant supply of hand-lettered cards, it teaches the trade from the bench: the alphabets that lettered fast and read far, price-ticket hands, sale and announcement cards, borders, and the layout sense that packed a selling message onto a standard card.

The 1905 date puts the book squarely in the trade's boom years, when show-card writing was one of the surest livings in lettering — department stores, drug stores, and dry-goods houses all kept card writers busy. Bersick's approach is the working man's: technique first, speed second, and ornament only where it helps the card sell. The plates favor the readable over the fancy, the hands a professional could actually produce at production pace.

For today's ticket writers and sign painters doing retail work, a 1905 practical manual is a direct line to the methods of the trade's busiest era — the letterforms and layouts that moved merchandise in the age of the great department stores. Collectors of antique show card writing books will find it a solid working text from the craft's high-water mark.

A vintage lettering manual from the working side of the card-writing trade. For show-card writers, ticket writers, and sign painters.

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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1905 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 1905 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 1905 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.