About the Cover In keeping with the retrofit theme within this issue of RBM, this image of an improved printing press is taken from:

Philippe-Denis Pierres, Déscription dune nouvelle presse dimprimerie (Paris: Imprimé chez lauteur, par sa nouvelle presse, 1786).

Philippe-Denis Pierres (17411808), printer to the French king, invented several printing presses. This one, in operation in Pierress Paris shop since 1784, used a cam instead of a screw to lower the platen against the type forme. This was just one of numerous late eighteenth-century attempts to improve the wooden hand press, experiments that culminated in Earl Stanhopes development of the iron press in 1800.

The book from which this image is taken is housed in the Grolier Club Library, and the image was previously reproduced in the catalogue for the Lasting Impressions exhibition at the Grolier Club in 2004.