The Color Printer. A Treatise

1892. EARHART, John. The Color Printer. A Treatise on the Use of Colors in Typographic Printing. 137, [1] pp., illustrated with a photographic frontispiece portrait of the author and 90 plates. 4to, 270 x 205 mm., bound in green publisher's cloth stamped in gold and colour, with emblem of three ink balls on front cover and spine, marbled edges. Cincinnati: Earhart and Richardson, 1892. First and only edition. A famous example of American colour graphics, "justly famous for its beauty and utility... [with] marvelous plates often hinting of Art Nouveau. Earhart offered demonstrations of color mixing, color-harmonies, and color printing in its various phases and recorded the actual proportions of inks used. Vignettes, letters, designs, and a whole variety of plates are rendered in most of the common color processes, and some of them are embossed." The book itself is not that rare, but copies in fine condition, and with the prospectus, such as this one, are rare. This copy includes various relevant pieces of ephemera from a previous owner ca. 1920, some of which have discoloured leaves, but the plates are largely unaffected. Birren Collection 213. The Book of Colour Concepts 524.