What is Letterpress?
In one word: Awesome!
In a few more words: In 1440 letterpress printing was invented by Johannes Gutenberg (of the “Gutenberg Press” and “Gutenberg Bible”) with the then-modern technology of movable type, wherein a reversed, raised surface (text or image) was inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image, one color at a time, one sheet at a time. Movable type was first invented in China using ceramic type in 1040 AD, and the Koreans developed movable metal type in 1100 AD, but it wasn’t until Gutenberg’s invention of a wooden printing press, based on a previously-existing wine press model, that printing with metal type came to the forefront of book-reproduction technology. With the advent of industrial mechanization, inking began to be carried out by rollers, instead of by hand, even further speeding the process, which paved the way for a broader dissemination of art and knowledge into the 20th century.