Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 12–17 July 2026
Format: in person, York, UK
Fee: $1,495

This course offers an in-depth engagement with the culture and craft of wood type, with a core focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, accompanied by an overview of earlier innovations and a hands-on creative session considering the revival and aesthetics of wood type in the twenty-first century. It will cover the materials and manufacture of wood type, the design of wood type, including the influence of signwriting and stone lettering, and the description of identification of typefaces and designs. It will aim to contextualize wood type in the burgeoning consumer and entertainment economies of the US and UK, and will open up new perspectives on the global and local cultures of wood type, examining the international, and frequently colonial, histories of the wood used to manufacture type, and the distinctive histories of individual wood type manufacturers. Topics will include individual type designers and manufacturers; specimen books; influence and innovation; advertising and entertainment; revivals; and the global voyages of both raw materials and finished products. The course is intended for students with little or no experience in the history of typography.  

Taught in York Explore Library and Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print, the course will take advantage of the newly recovered DeLittle Archives and the DeLittle collection, allowing students to get hands on with a remarkable corpus of previously unstudied documentary evidence alongside material and samples from every stage of the design and manufacturing process. The course will include opportunities to get hands on in Thin Ice Press’s well-equipped printing studio, as well as to work with their extensive collection of wood type.