Print design, like virtually all other decorative arts, exploded in a profusion of ornament during the late nineteenth century. "Artistic printing," as this style of Victorian graphic design was called, was dense with embellished typefaces, colour images, and ornaments, all framed by intricate borders. Used widely for bills, menus, advertisements, flyers, on other ephemeral products, this commercial style, for a while, represented the "best" of popular taste. But like all things Victorian, this style of design fell abruptly out of favor as Modernism took hold throughout Europe and America and revolutionized our way of thinking about ornament. The quirky specimens of letterpress printing-now derided as morally suspect "freaks of fancy"-were largely relegated to the dustbin, with few bits of ephemera finding their way into design archives. The authors of this book painstakingly unearthed examples of this once-ubiquitous if short-lived design culture, and present a treasure trove of visual material, most never before seen by today's designers