I Mentioned Letterpress,

a couple of days ago,

it is the term used to describe relief printing, one of the three methods used to print, (the other two being intaglio and planographic), but back to letterpress at first each piece of type was a individual piece of metal or wood, but for great effect a process was made where the same sheet of paper is passed through the press several times, using a different set of wooden type blocks and a different colour each time, it was an exacting process, as everything had to be positioned perfectly to get the desired results, back in the 1870's chromatic type was extremely popular,

as these examples from the 1874 book Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, Etc. show, the book was a sales tool from the William H. Page company, the book contained 100 prints with up to seven colours each, today of course with modern machinery and computers this form of printing is easy to achieve but back in the 1870's it was a difficult task, but it certainty made the type stand out.