The Techniques of Colonial Printers

ocumention focusing on the printing trade of the 18th c. is readily available to the modern scholar as primary source material. Several dozen printing manuals had appeared in various European languages (five in English) by 1800. The first, and by far most useful, was Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises.... It provides detailed instructions on every conceivable aspect of printing such as the proper layout of workspaces, the correct way to clean type, and even offers helpful hints on two-color printing.

Though we know much about 18th c. printing in general, we know much less about the particular circumstances of printing in Williamsburg. It is assumed that Williamsburg printers followed the typical techniques common to 18th c. practise, but there is an almost complete lack of primary sources to document their activities, with the vital exception of the imprints themselves.