Historical Background

The invention of the movable-type printing press around 1440 in Europe revolutionized information exchange. Although movable-type already existed in China and Korea, Johann Gutenberg’s invention in Germany brought it to Europe for the first time. Gutenberg's printshop would have included craftsmen who casted type from a molten lead alloy with a hand mold. Then compositors would have set the metal type by hand-selecting characters from a large wooden case with compartments for each letter. For the first few hundred years of their existence, presses were mostly made of wood.

Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works, published from 1678 to 1684, included an early image of an English wooden common press. Note the similarity in design of this press and and its earlier and later counterparts. The design of handpresses varied slightly in different geographical regions, but remained relatively stable until the invention of iron handpresses in the early 19th century.

The Uncommon Press is a modern reconstruction of an English wooden common press, specifically based on ones from the period 1770–1790. The American printer, inventor, and stateman, Benjamin Franklin, would have printed on such a wooden common press in the American colonial period. The Cary Collection houses a wide variety of presses, but prior to the acquisition of the Uncommon Press it had a gap in its collection since it did not feature a press of this type. As there are fewer than 90 extant wooden presses predating 1820, it would be difficult to find one to complete the collection. A team of RIT students helped fill the gap when they constructed the Uncommon Press from scratch, using as many historic methods and materials as possible.