Exhibitions Home | Current | Upcoming | Past | Virtual

Printing and Graphic Arts

- December 1, 2003

Museum: American History Museum

Location: 3rd Floor, West Wing

This hall traces the history of prints and printing techniques. Settings feature a printing office of Benjamin Franklin's time, with 2 wooden presses; a 19th-century foundry in which type was still cast by hand, as it had been since Gutenberg's day; a job shop of 1865, equipped with hand and treadle presses; and an 1880s newspaper office with a steam-driven Hoe cylinder press. There are also exhibits on printmaking, from the first etchings and woodcuts to modern photomechanical methods.