Any Idea what this is?

It looks like a rubber stereo. Unmounted. Probably an accounting form.

Thanks. It’s made out of lead. There’s still tiny nails in it from being attached to something.

It was nailed to a wood base, and it is a stereotype ruled form. No telling what the form was for since there’s no type for headings etc. It probably has a swirly pattern of marks on the back from the machining of it to be type-high mounted on the wooden base.

Bob

Thanks for info.

Its odd, that line block, pen ruling was almost always cheaper, for that sort of formswork, at least in London it was. Until the advent of small offset that is. So why go to the cost of a block? maybe some way out in the sticks shop and the nearest pen ruler miles and miles away… vast American distances maybe …..

Yup, I think pen ruling was rare. I’ve got a whole bunch of mounted plates that are just forms work. Used to be big business for commercial printers. Especially numbered forms.

A commonplace find when clearing small provincial jobbing letterpress printers in the UK to my experience.

Thanks for the info.

Being lead, it probably was a standard docket book form, cast in the hundreds by a stereo type maker and sold to printers as stock blocks for accounting books. Printers could buy these like any other stock block and could typeset the headings and column titles, lock up the composition and print. Today we buy image files on line.

Thanks for the info!