Letterpress.

Flatbed Cylinder Press: The type or plate is locked in a chase which is then mounted on the flatbed of the press. Grippers on a rotating impression cylinder pick up a sheet of paper and as the cylinder revolves, the paper is pulled around it. The inked flatbed containing the letterpress plate then moves under the impression cylinder. The squeeze between the impression cylinder and the flatbed creates the printed impression on the paper. When the impression is complete, the flatbed returns to its original position and is inked for the next impression.

The letterpress process is referred to as a "relief" process because the printed image is produced from a plate in which the image area is slightly raised above the non-image surface of the plate. It is a direct printing method in that the inked plate applies the image directly to the substrate. Letterpress is one of the oldest printing processes and was the most widely used process until the middle of the 20th century when advances in other printing processes made it obsolete. Flexography, which is an updated version of letterpress, is now the dominate relief printing process.

The letterpress process utilizes an ink that is thick in consistency and is well suited for relief printing. A set of rollers deposits the ink on the raised image area of the type or plate, but ink is not deposited on the non-image areas. For this reason, letterpress plates do not require any dampening in order to keep the non-image areas free of ink. This makes the process a simple one and allows for consistent results, but the process still cannot match the quality of more sophisticated print processes.