Smith&Press is a unique publisher specializing in early printed books. The focus is on books that are typically not available or prohibitive to purchase for institutions and collectors alike. We consider three aspects of a book to create distinctive offerings for the world to enjoy.

The first aspect considers the art of the book to be an essential part of the experience of early printed books. This governs the full spectrum of the book from printing to binding.

The second aspect is focused on the affordability of the content. We produce small production runs of reference editions that are intended to be reasonably priced while providing a high quality copy of the book. Reference editions are art books in their own right. They are hand bound and printed on high quality paper to provide a copy that any collector or scholar would cherish for years.

The third aspect is the interpretation of the content of these works. We work with various scholars to provide a translation of these books into English. Translations are published separately from the facsimiles and focus more on the content rather than the art of the book.

Smith&Press employs a number of artists and craftsmen that collaborate to produce very high quality facsimiles of certain important early works.  A group of conservators, binders, printers, paper makers, smiths, carpenters and historians collaborated on our offerings.  We encourage you to contact us with any questions or comments.

What Makes us Different?

We manage the translation, digitization and publication of our books so that we can control the quality and costs to bring you works that are generally unavailable or very rare.  Many of our works are from a privately held collection. We sell directly to end users to minimize the soaring cost of distribution and middlemen. We maintain the inventory of our works in house to assure proper handling and care of our books. When we represent the works of others, we make certain that the quality is what you would expect of us.  If you purchase one of our own publications from any other party, you can be assured that it will ship from our facility as we do not allow any other vendor to stock our books.