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To B2 or Not to B2: Shop Prints Shakespeare’s Plays on a Single Press Sheet

Get thee to a magnifier. Everything that William Shakespeare wrote for the stage can be seen and read in this meticulous but straightforward piece of offset lithographic presswork.

Thursday, August 01, 2024

Produced in 1623 by the London printers William and Isaac Jaggard, the First Folio of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare remains one of history’s most noteworthy specimens of book publishing: 36 plays totaling 844,421 words set across 900 8-3/4 x 13-3/8-in. pages bound in a volume weighing 4 lbs. 13 oz.

The Jaggards printed 750 copies of the First Folio, 233 of which are known still to exist. It’s safe to say that the father-and-son duo could not possibly have imagined anyone doing the same thing they did on a single sheet of 19 x 25-in. paper.

But Mercer Color, a commercial shop in Coldwater, Ohio, did exactly that by reducing every line, word, and letter of the plays to a point size too small for the eye to see, imaging the text to plate at an extremely high resolution, and printing it flawlessly on an ordinary offset lithographic press.


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About Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry is a journalist and an educator who has covered the graphic communications industry since 1984. The author of many hundreds of articles on business trends and technological developments in graphic communications, he has been published in most of the leading trade media in the field. He also has taught graphic communications as an adjunct lecturer for New York University and New York City College of Technology. The holder of numerous awards for industry service and education, Henry is currently the managing director of Liberty or Death Communications, a content consultancy.

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