Trade Exchanges.

Yet another addition to the English typographical press has to be recorded. We have received the first number of the Printing World, published and conducted by Mr John Bassett, formerly editor of the Effective Advertiser. It is a large and handsome monthly, the same size as Paper and Press, and is well printed in long primer old-style type. The new Olympic Initials— which appear to have become popular—are freely used; but they are a smaller series than those used in Typo. The contents of the first number are practical, varied, and interesting, including biographical sketches and admirable portraits of Mr John Farlow Wilson of Cassell's, and of Mr Alfred Godfrey, the inventor of the excellent printing machine that bears his name. The new magazine contains 36 pages besides wrapper, and has a good show of advertisements.

The Publisher's Circular now appears as a weekly, of 40 quarto pages. The first issue in the new form (10th January) contains a biographical sketch and excellent portrait of Mr George Robertson, the celebrated Melbourne bookseller; and also a portrait of his son and successor, Mr Charles Melbourne Robertson.

Messrs Thorvald Hamann & Co.'s Typo-grafiske og lithografiske Meddelelser is always interesting, and beautifully printed. Nos. 146-151 reach us all together. The chief feature in the latest numbers is the reproduction of a number of very fine designs, decorative and illustrative, by Gerlach & Schenk, of Vienna. The books of designs issued by this firm are reviewed in detail, and judging by the examples shown, must be good.

Herr H. Poppelbaum, of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, has produced the best trade-paper, so far as our knowledge extends, issued by any typefounder. The tenth number is better than any of its predecessors, and, both in its typographic and literary characteristics, is a model organ of the trade, The cover is a gem of tasteful display and delicate tint-printing; and over ten closely-printed pages are occupied with practical technical matter. We only regret that owing to deficiencies in some of the earlier numbers on our file, we are unable to bind the volume. Apart from certain pretty novelties in typographic ornament (already noted), the most interesting feature to us in the present number is a long article by Herr Leopold Kucharz, of Brünn, illustrated with five engravings, describing a new and very ingenious method of printing consecutive numbers. Special apparatus, and types of very peculiar form are required. We have kept the number by us for some weeks, with the idea of giving an abstract of the invention; but it requires some study even with the diagrams, and without them we would find it very difficult to explain the method. It is patented in Germany and Austro-Hungary.

L'Intermédiare is always welcome. The January number contains an extraordinary study in brass-rule—a facsimile of a Japanese sketch, by M. Edouard Lanier. A simple and really charming brass-rule design in the same issue is a vignette of a half-open door in perspective. It is the composition of M. Jacoues, of Meaux, who is certainly a typographic artist. A colored calendar, by Paul Dodrelle, Paris, published as a supplement, gained the editor's gold medal in a typographic competition, and is a very elaborate as well as artistic piece of work. We cannot say that we admire the full-page design by M. G. Girrane, in the February number, representing the Muses visiting the tomb of Hégésippe Moreau, the printer-poet. The Muses are models of a very vulgar type, attired in transparent dragon-fly wings and voluminous garments more diaphanous even than the gauzy wings, and through which one may discern that the artist's figure-drawing is very indifferent. He has attempted the sublime, and dropped into the ridiculous. The menu by M. Victor Breton has one fatal defect—common in Yankee « slob » -work, but which we are surprised to find in a job by a French printer. The groundwork is a design with figures of waiters, &c., and the lettering is printed right across. A groundwork may properly be formed from any conventional or geometrical design—may represent a fabric, or the grain of wood or veining of stone; but to print plain ornamental lettering across a representation of landscapes, trees, animals or human figures, &c., is an outrage on art.

The delightful original initials and other ornaments in the American Bookmaker are alone sufficient to make it attractive, apart from its undoubted technical value. Moreover, it publishes from month to month some of the most charming designs from American illustrated books. With the January number, beginning its twelfth volume, it appears with a new and striking design on its wrapper, and with finely engraved departmental headings. It has in various ways widened its scope, and we see that in noting new designs of type, it has just begun to travel outside of its own country; but it is not yet so cosmopolitan in this respect as our own journal. It is strange that of all the scores of trade papers in the English language, only two should have taken up this particular branch of the subject — one which, to us, at all events, has a never-failing interest.