Sign and Show Card Writing (1899) — Hardcover Reprint

? 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

Every trade needs its first book — and for many Victorian beginners, Charles F. Butterworth's 1899 Sign and Show Card Writing was exactly that. This compact 64-page primer introduces the twin crafts of sign writing and show card writing as they were practiced at the close of the nineteenth century: brush alphabets, basic layout, and the working methods of the 1890s shop.

Butterworth writes for the starter: the apprentice, the store clerk handed a brush, the ambitious amateur. His instruction keeps to the essentials — how the brush behaves, how the standard alphabets are built, how a plain card or sign is laid out to read well. The 1899 date gives the book its period flavor: this is lettering from the gaslight era, before the twentieth century streamlined everything. Butterworth's models emphasize the bold, readable letters that sold goods from Victorian shopfronts.

For beginners in sign painting, collectors of Victorian trade literature, and anyone curious where the show-card tradition started, this 64-page primer is an accessible entry point. The alphabets are simple, honest, and copyable; the methods are the foundation everything later was built on.

Whether you're taking up the brush or collecting the trade's first steps, Butterworth's 1899 primer is where many sign writers began. Start where they started.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 64 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1899 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 1899 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 1899 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.