⏳ 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 draftsman worth his T-square learned to letter before he learned to draw — and this 1907 Student's Alphabets, published by Keuffel & Esser, is the compact manual that taught them. K&E was the legendary Hoboken maker of drafting instruments, and when the company printed a book of alphabets, drawing offices everywhere treated it as law. Inside are the standard hands of the engineering drawing office: single-stroke vertical and slant alphabets in the Reinhardt tradition taught in technical schools, Roman and Gothic capitals for titles, and the quick freehand letters that filled in notes, dimensions, and specification sheets.

What makes this book worth owning is its discipline. Drafting lettering is lettering under rules — every stroke the same weight, every curve derived from the geometry of the instruments that drew it — and this manual drills the student in the letterforms, the stroke order, and the spacing that keep a drawing legible at any scale. It is lettering as an engineering skill, measured and repeatable, the foundation every professional letterer of the era stood on.

For today's sign painters and letterers, Student's Alphabets is a master class in the single-stroke alphabet — the ancestor of the speed lettering used on signs, tickets, and show cards. Architects, draftsmen, and graphic designers will find the formal Roman and Gothic plates a ready source of title lettering with genuine 1907 authority.

A vintage lettering manual from the drafting room rather than the sign shop — and proof that the finest letterforms of the age were drawn with a compass and a ruling pen. For sign painters, lettering students, and anyone who wants to understand where professional lettering discipline comes from.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1907 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 1907 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 1907 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.