HANDY box No. 156 Pointing hand- vintage letterpress printing block

  

This is Handy box 156 from Baltimore type. It is full of different size pointing hands that were once so common in advertising. Most were was used by either Richardson Printing in Marietta, Ohio or the Noble County Leader in Caldwell Ohio. Please see my other auctions for more great printing pieces. I have a lot of pieces and will continue to list them.

Most are mounted on wood blocks that are one inch high. The metal is normally copper or zinc. A small percentage are solid metal, they tend to be significantly heavier than the wood and copper ones. I assume the all metal ones would have the metal mixture outline below. Blocks with letterpress printing were always in reverse.

Printing blocks for lineart and halftone printing are typically made from copper or zinc. I have seen some that appear to be aluminum.

A few have been solid metal and are very heavy. 95 percent of them appear to be copper. I have never seen a steel one. I would think that would be very hard to work with. The process to make these were a chemical etching process. The process to make Linotype used antimony, and tin, and is typically composed of 84% lead, 12% antimony, and 4% tin. Linotype machines were general used with type blocks to make a complete page. See my other auctions for additional vintage printing blocks.