Communism Never Looked So Good

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1884, after artist-poet-designer-printer William Morris compulsively read his copy of the first edition in French (1872-1875) of Karl Marx's Das Kapital until its flimsy binding was a wreck, he asked the great T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, then new to the craft of bookbinding but with enormous promise and taste, to rebind the book's first volume before it completely fell apart within his enthusiastic hands.

Morris, who had joined the new Social Democratic Federation, Britian's first fan club for Marx, shortly before wading into Das Kaptial waist-deep, was besotted with the German philosopher. He "was full of Karl Marx whom he had begun to read in translation" according to an April 13, 1883 entry in his friend Cormell Price's diary. Morris loved Marx's take on history but Marx's economics were another matter: Morris admitted that they caused him "agonies of confusion of the brain."

Despite the headaches, on March 14, 1883 Morris participated in a march to Highgate Cemetery where pilgrims congregated at Marx's grave to celebrate the anniversary of his death. 

This was the second binding by Cobden-Sanderson in his own workshop, the Doves Bindery (he had previously apprenticed with Roger de Coverly), a remarkable achievement for someone new to the art and craft.

After William Morris's death in 1896, Cobden-Sanderson, at the behest of Sydney Cockerell, then Morris's secretary, recorded the story of this binding on its lower end leaf:

"This book - Le Capital - was bound and tooled for William Morris by me in my first workshop on Maiden Lane 1884 and finished the 9th. October and the pattern on its sides and back is the second of my making. The tools were second hand and bought - and used - at haphazard, but the tooling and the binding pleased William Morris and his pleasure was my own great delight. In Memoriam I write this the 24th. February 1897. T.J. Cobden-Sanderson. I should like to add the book was his own & before it came to me to be bound had been worn to loose sections by his own constant study of it. T.J.C-S."

It is unknown what formal arrangements were made between Morris and Cobden-Sanderson beyond the presumed from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.

I suspect, however, that Lenin would have proclaimed this binding of Das Kapital an example of  excess completely out of touch with simple, proletarian utility. The fact that it wound up in the collection of Estelle Doheny, heiress to her husband Edward's vast oil fortune, would have surely thrown him into a fit. Karl Marx finely dressed and living with a capitalist fat cat? Nyet!

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MARX, Karl. Le Capital. Traduction de M.J. Roy, entièrement révisée par l'auteur. Paris: Maurice Lachatre et Cie, [1872-1875].

Tidcombe, Cobden-Sanderson no. 2. Wormsley Library 81.

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The Only Bookplate Designed By René Lalique

by Stephen J. Gertz

Found in a copy of the Kelmscott Press's The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems by William Morris (1892) from the collection of Emilie B. Grigsby (1879-1964), this is the only bookplate ever designed by René Lalique (1860-1945), the celebrated French art glass and jewelry designer.

Note her given name at lower left, so well integrated into the background foliage that it almost disappears into it.

Grigsby was a wealthy American bibliophile of "colorful reputation," and the young, comely "ward" (i.e., concubine) of the notorious robber baron, Charles Yerkes (1837-1905) who built (and bilked) the Chicago transit system and Northern and Piccadilly lines in London.

Emilie Grigsby was almost forty years younger than Yerkes but held her own,; she was sophisticated charming, and intelligent. The mansion he built at 660 Park Avenue, New York City - just a few blocks from his Fifth Avenue palace where Mrs. Yerkes lived - was a gift to Emilie, the daughter of a slave-holding father from Kentucky and a brothel madam mom from Cincinnati. Her fine library was sold in New York by Anderson and Company in 1912.

Emilie B. Grigsby.

"A most interesting catalogue of books belonging to Miss Emilie Grigsby, the ward of the late Charles T. Yerkes of Chicago, has been issued by the Anderson Auction Company, which will sell them in the week beginning Jan. 29. It is a woman's library of fine books, not subscription books, but really interesting and beautiful books and fine bindings. The sale includes long series of the William Loring Andrews books; publications of the Essex House, Kelmscott, Vale and other private presses..." (Boston Evening News, January 24, 1912).

"She has a charm one feels at once and responds to, a charm, vague, indescribable, that borders on the aesthetic, the kind that some of Chopin's music exerts over the crudest of us.

"Perhaps her appearance fosters this idea of the spiritual. Golden hair, blue eyes, fragile as a piece of Dresden china, she is as many of our famous artists have painted her. Absolute unconsciousness of her beauty, lack of affectation, simplicity of manners are hers. She listens to what is told her, and speaks when she has something to say. There is no boredom, nor yet effusiveness. She strikes easily and naturally the note so many others have attempted and failed, the note of harmony and perfect poise. No restless striving for this, nor craving for that" (Lillian Barrett, Emilie Grigsby - A Reminiscence.. New York Times, July 16, 1911).

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Bookplate image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, witrh our thanks.

Image of Grigsby courtesy of University of Illinois Archives, with our thanks.
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A Doves Binding To Die For

By Stephen J Gertz

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever." 

So Keats declares in the first line of Endymion (1818), and never has a poem so succinctly expressed the exquisite loveliness of  the binding it is found within, here an eleven on the 1-10 Drool Scale.

Bound by The Doves Bindery in 1894, this binding is a masterpiece of Arts & Crafts hand-work.

In full prussian blue morocco with a single gilt fillet frame and corner design of carnations,  three-pointed leaves, solid triangular tools, and gougework  enclosing a field of tiny gilt stars, its design is handsomely elegant, an aristocratic nature walk under a starlit dusk. The compartments possess massed stars and alternating carnation and leaf centerpieces. "1818" is tooled in gilt at the spine foot. The turn-ins feature leaf corner-pieces and triple fillets. All edges are gilt, with gauffered borders.

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840 – 1922) was an English artist and bookbinder closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. A friend of William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson was passionate about the movement, and once, during a dinner party with the Morrises, he was persuaded by Morris's wife, Jane Burden, to pursue bookbinding. He was a natural. He was an artist. He wildly succeeded. Ten years later he gave it up but in 1894 he opened a workshop, The Doves Bindery, at the urging of Morris. In 1900, he established the Doves Press, one of the most celebrated of the era's private press movement.

The  hand-work  is  breathtaking. The field  of  stars, for instance, is  tooled with a degree of  precision   usually  seen only with block-stamping. Each star  is delicate but not weak. Charles McLeish was the fiinsher at The Doves Bindery, carefully following Cobden-Sanderson's instructions and patterns. Cobden-Sanderson's artistic attention to detail is obsessive: he designed gauffered borders to each of the gilt edges. It's a very subtle touch, easily overlooked. George William Gwynne performed the bindery's edge gilding, either on the premises or at his own shop.

It should be noted that these gauffered edge-borders were not recorded in Tidcombe's descriptions; space precluded full details.

The Doves Bindery produced 828 bindings before closing to outside work in 1909. This binding, number 123 in Tidcombe's chronological catalog, was bound on October 9, 1894 for acclaimed New York art dealer, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904), who paid £18 for it.

With original pull-off box by Doves Bindery.

The book next passed into the hands of author, lecturer, bibliophile, political activist, etc. Louise Ward Watkins  (1890-1975) of Pasadena, California, who, amongst her many accomplishments, was the first California woman to run for United States Senate on a major party's ticket. A married woman of means, she was an avid and discerning book collector, her  collection second. perhaps, in quality (if not quantity) only to the library of her neighbor to the southwest in Los Angeles, Estelle Doheny (1875-1958).

 The binding recently returned to Southern California.

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[DOVES BINDERY]. KEATS, John. Endymion: A Poetic Romance.  London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 1818.

First edition, earliest issue, with only one line of errata and "Printed by T. Miller, Noble street, Cheapside" on verso to half-title. Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 7/16 in; 215 x 139 mm). [12], 207, [1, blank] pp. With the bookplate of Louise Ward Watkins,

MacGillvray 2. Tidcombe 123.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

Accurate color reproduction is always a challenge, and the actual hue of the binding is that seen in the double-spread image of the spine foot.

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The $65,000 Binding, Bound To Be Great

by Stephen J. Gertz

TENNYSON, Alfred Lord. The Princess.
London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1880.
One of 50 Large Paper Copies signed by the printer
and dated October 23, 1880 (this being copy #41.
Bound by Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson.

The great Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson bound this lavishly gilt apple green morocco masterpiece of art, craft, taste and restrained splendor with his own hands. A key work in the history of bookbinding - this is a superstar binding in all ways - it is being offered for $65,000.

Its covers are diapered in gilt with Tudor roses on leafy vines (Cobden--Sanderson Design No. 20), each compartment formed by roses containing an "M," the center cruciform panel on the upper cover with the name "MITFORD" tooled in gilt, and a "B" above it and a "C" below it. The rear cover possesses the date "24 February 1886" in the center compartment. Raised bands, a guttered (i.e., concave) spine (as intended), spine panels with central Tudor rose surrounded by leafy vines and much stippling, gilt turn-ins. All edges gilt and gauffered finish the work.

 

The front pastedown endpaper has the engraved bookplate of Bertram Freeman-Mitford. The rear pastedown has Cobden-Sanderson's handwritten receipt for £ 6.6.0 affixed, and  the rear free endpaper has manuscript letter from Cobden-Sanderson to Lady Clementine Mitford tipped-in. 

This is an important, early specimen of the work of Cobden-Sanderson, the central figure in the history of English bookbinding and the father of modern binding. Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) did not produce many bindings with his own hands, but he did nothing short of change the entire course of bookbinding in England. 

Tidcombe's detailed and exhaustive catalogue records just 167 examples of bindings produced by him, all of them executed between July of 1884 and March of 1893. Through this small corpus of work, Cobden-Sanderson "rejuvenated English binding" with his theories of design "and set it on a new course of development" (Adams, Morgan Library Exhibition catalog). Howard M. Nixon calls Cobden-Sanderson a "pre-eminent figure . . . both as a designer of great originality, who rescued the craft from half a century of purely imitative work, and as a craftsman of outstanding ability" (Styles and Designs of Bookbinding From the Twelfth Through Twentieth Centuries. London, 1906).

Produced during the first twenty months of his career, the present binding heralds two milestones: the first use of the new Tudor rose and rose leaves (C-S tools 2a, 6a, 6n), and the first employment of an important and improved method of preparing the leather for its gilt decoration).

Rear endpaper with Cobden-Sanderson's holograph receipt.
Note his stamped-signature in gilt to lower turn-in.

Insight into the personal and business side of this volume can be found in Cobden-Sanderson's journal entry for December 22, 1885, which records that "on Saturday [19 December] Mitford and Lady Clementine came and were exceedingly polite. Mitford brought me a large paper (Kegan Paul) 'Princess' to bind by the 24th February, mode and finish to be left entirely to myself." The binder's notes observe that "the design of back-side varies from front. The 'M' is inverted in the lower half [of the back]. This, an accident, [is] a great improvement. Time 54 3/4 hours. Undercharged."

From the letter tipped into the volume we further learn that the book was delivered on 23rd February 1886 "by a sure hand," arriving just in time, as it was to be Lady Clementine's gift to her husband on his 49th birthday, the next day. Cobden-Sanderson visited the Mitfords in April and was pleased to find Bertram Mitford thrilled with the binding, even though his "Philistine friends" had thought the (intentionally) concave spine a flaw. Cobden-Sanderson records in his journal on 2 April 1886: "I advised him to stand by the gutter [i.e., defend the spine design], for it was most beautiful." 

Mitford (1837-1916), the diplomat and author, was created first Baron Redesdale in 1902; he is best remembered as the grandfather of the brilliant and scandalous Mitford sisters, including noted writers Nancy and Jessica, Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity, and the current dowager duchess of Devonshire.

Artist, bookbinder, and fine press publisher, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. It was during a dinner party held by his friend, William Morris, that the idea of becoming a bookbinder was suggested to him by Morris' wife, Jane Burden. 

"He told her about how anxious he was to use his hands, and she replied, 'Then why don't you learn bookbinding? That would add art to our little community, and we could work together.' Ten days later he was taking his first lesson in bookbinding from De Coverly, and within a year he was working independently" (op cit, Adams).

Opening a shop in 1884, by 1886, the date of this binding, he seems to have hit his stride; the binding, from February, is the first from that key year.

In 1900 he founded, in partnership with Emery Walker, the Doves Press (and bindery), located in Hammersmith, London.

Born Thomas Sanderson, upon his marriage he added the surname of his wife, Anne Cobden, to his own.

"Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was a small man, intellectual, an unsocial socialist, proud, neurotic, and a genius. His bookbinding and his printing, largely concentrated in the quarter century  from 1885 to 1910, have a timeless beauty of style and come close almost to perfection in execution as can be expected from the hand of man. With a minimum stock of binder's tools of his own design…he achieved 'infinite riches in a small room.' He was anti-mechanical, anti-commonplace, and anti-dogmatic with respect to other people's dogmas. John Ruskin was his infallible master, William Morris his fallible mentor" (op cit, Adams).

Remember the name Thomas Cobden-Sanderson. Or, as he's known throughout the English-speaking world's Rap community, T-Cob. In Tokyo, T-Cob-San.

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Tidcombe 33.

Marianne Tidcombe's The Bookbindings of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson: A Study of His Work 1884-1893, Based on His TIme Book (London: The British Library, 1984) is the key reference to T.J. Cobden-Sanderson's bindings.

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Bound To Be Great Week continues:

Monday: Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great.
Tuesday: The Guild of Women Binders, Bound To Be Great.
Wednesday: More Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great.
Thursday: The $65,000 Binding, Bound To Be Great.
Friday: Drop-Dead Gorgeous Bindings, Bound To Be Great.__________

Unless otherwise indicated, all images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books, currently offering these books through their just published Catalog 61: Historically Significant and Decorative Bindings 1536-2010, a magnificent production, and an instant and important reference source.

This post impossible without the assistance of Pirages' head cataloger and Booktryst contributor, Cokie G. Anderson.

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Of related interest:

Five Great 20th Century Bindings.

Five Must-See Modern French Bindings.

A Royal (Roger) Payne in the Binding.

Three Must-See Bindings.

Three More Must-See Bindings.

Search our archives under "bindings" to find more fascinating and visually stunning posts on the subject.
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Gaskin's Hans Christian Andersen and the Kelmscott Press

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra illustrated title page.

"Mr. Gaskin's pictures ... of the tales are precisely what they should be, not because they belong to the manner of the Birmingham Art School and symbolize past all patience and affect the absence of aerial perspective shown in the very old wood cuts, but because, in spite of their mannerisms, they give life to the text and express it somehow or other in their long, lank Thumbelinas and Helgas and their young babes. They catch the attention and fix it upon the expression, arbitrary perhaps, yet adequate, of a persoality. Once seen, Mr. Gaskin's Thumbelina will always be the Thumbelina of the story..."

So said the New York Times book review in 1895 of a new edition of The Stories and Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Arthur J. Gaskin's illustrations to this edition would serve as his calling card to William Morris and lead to assignments for the Kelmscott Press, the most celebrated private press of them all.

The Philosopher's Stone.

Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862 – 1928) was an English illustrator, painter, teacher and designer of jewellery and enamelwork. Gaskin was a member of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, which sought to apply the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement across the decorative arts. Like many of the group, Gaskin studied at the Birmingham School of Art under Edward R. Taylor and later taught there.

What the Moon Saw.

Gaskin worked as a decorative artist from 1890, and within a few years attracted the  attention of William Morris.

The Marsh King's Daughter.

"...Where in England was Morris to find the artists who could satisfactorily illustrate the Kelmscott books? The answer, surprisingly, was Birmingham, where the arts-and-crafts movement flourished more vigorously than anywhere else in the provinces, mainly through the influence of the municipal School of Art. 

She Was Good For Nothing.

"Three youthful artists associated with the School - Artur J. Gaskin, Charles M. Gere, and Edmund New - were doing attractive book illustrating during the 1890s, and Morris was aware of them and their work. 'Gaskin, a young Birmingham artist, called in the afternoon [at Kelmscott House] with a number of very pretty drawings for an edition of Hans Andersen which Geo Allen is going to publish,' [Sydney] Cockerell noted in his diary...

The Old House.

"...Morris's attitude towards Gaskin and Gere was ambivalent: he was grateful for their loyalty to the arts-and-crafts ideals, yet his praise for their work was often cautious and qualified. In an interview in the Daily Chronicle (9 Oct. 1893), he was quoted as saying that 'there is a great quantity of excellent art, but the only thing that is new, strictly speaking, is the rise of the Birmingham school of book decorators...these young men of the Birmingham School of Art - Mr. Gaskin [et al] - have given a new start to the art of book decorating.'

The Wild Swans.

"In another interview...two years later, however, Morris remarked: 'I think they have, in Gaskin and New, two very good men, who have ideas and originality. For the most part, however, they follow too slavishly the opposition to conventionality...but you must remember that the Birmingham people have not yet found their feet. They will do good work yet, I am sure.' This was faint praise indeed...

The Sleep of Holger Danske.

"Gaskin's relationship with Morris was, if anything, even more turbulent than Gere's. Subsequently known as a designer of jewelry, Gaskin was scheduled to illustrate a Kelmscott Press edition of The Roots of the Mountains that never materialized; Morris also arranged for him to design the pictures for The Well at the World's End and The Shepheard's Calendar (1896).

Illustration by Gaskin to The Shepheard's Calender (1896).

"The twelves designs for the latter book are impressive - Gordon Ray has called them 'perhaps the most successful of Kelmscott Press illustrations,' a judgment in which Colin Franklin concurs" (Peterson, The Kelmscott Press, pp. 157-8).

Big Claus and Little Claus.

The Rose Elf.

"Mr. George Allen issues  also a really excellent edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales. The translation is by Dr. H.O. Sommer, and there are 100 drawings by Mr. Arthur J. Gaskin, under whose direction the 'Book of Pictured Carols' was produced. It will be a pleasure to many to renew acquaintance with Big Claus and Little Claus, and all the other friends of our childhood, in this excellent edition" (Literary World, December 1, 1893).

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[GASKIN, Arthur J., illus.]. ANDERSEN, Hans Christian. Stories and Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Translated by H. Oskar Sommer. With 100 Pictures by Arthur J. Gaskin. London: George Allen, 1893.

One of 300 Large Paper Copies printed on hand-made paper. Two quarto volumes (9 3/4 x 7 5/16 in; 248 x 186 mm). [2], xi, [1, blank], 398, [2]; [2, blank], xii, 426, [2, blank] pp. Initials. One hundred black and white illustrations, many full page, including frontispieces and extra illustrated title pages.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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The "Other Man" Behind the Private Press Movement

Walker, photographed by George Bernard Shaw.
Photo courtesy of the Emery Walker Trust

Many people have heard of William Morris. Those with an interest in fine printing or fine binding will know the names of St. John Hornby and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson. Few, however, remember the man who had more influence on the design of modern books than any of these great craftsmen: Sir Emery Walker (1851–1933). Walker was the son of a coachbuilder, and left school at 13 to support his family after his father went blind. He did not have the advantage of an Oxford education or of a comfortable middle-class upbringing. He was, however, smart and talented, with a keen sense of aesthetics. In the early 1870s, he found his calling when he went to work for Alfred Dawson, a printed who had perfected a new method of etching called glyptography. Walker worked for Dawson's Typographic Etching Company for 10 years, before leaving in 1883 to start his own firm of "process and general engravers, draughtsmen, map-constructors, and photographers of works of art."

Hammersmith Terrace. Photo courtesy of the Emery Walker Trust

Walker's new office and house were in Hammersmith Terrace, a riverside neighborhood in London that was also home to William Morris. The two men discovered shared interest in socialism and craftsmanship which led to a lifelong friendship. Both were active in the Hammersmith Socialist Society and were founders of the influential Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Walker was especially fond of the rare books known as incunabula, meaning they were printed before 1500.

A Leaf from a Bible printed by Nicolaus Jenson in 1476

According to the Emery Walker Trust, "A lecture given by Walker in 1888 at which he projected magic-lantern slides of photographs he had taken of 15th-century typefaces gave Morris the idea for the last great project of his life, the Kelmscott Press." Walker declined to be a partner in the press, citing "'some sense of proportion' and no capital to risk." (DNB) However, he acted as an unofficial advisor to the press throughout Morris' life.

The English Bible from the Doves Press

In 1900, Walker joined with bookbinder T. J. Cobden-Sanderson to found the Doves Press as a vehicle for the production of the "Book Beautiful." Unlike the productions of the Kelmscott or Ashendene presses, Doves books had no illustrations or decoration other than the occasional very simple hand-painted initial, as seen on the opening page of the Doves Bible, above. As Cave says, the Doves Press books, "completely without ornament or illustration, . . . depended for their beauty almost entirely on the clarity of the type, the excellence of the layout, and the perfection of the presswork."

A closer view of the Doves type

The Doves type, renowned for its beauty and readability, was designed by Walker, based on the typography of the 15th century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson. The eccentric Cobden-Sanderson was not the easiest person to get along with, and in 1909 a bitter disagreement between the two founders caused Walker to leave the press. Cobden-Sanderson carried on alone until 1916 when, after shutting down the press, he committed one of the greatest crimes in the history of typography: he threw all of Walker's gorgeous Doves type into the Thames, so it could never be used by anyone else (particularly Walker).

The Ashendene Dante, printed in Walker's Subiaco type

Luckily, other examples of Walker's fine typograhics designs live on, notably in two fonts he designed for the Ashendene Press, the Subiaco (based on that of 15th century printers Sweynham and Pannartz, and the Ptolemy, based on 15th German type. However, as the DNB notes, "his great reputation among students of typography rests on a far wider basis, for he was keenly preoccupied with the appearance of the everyday book, and not only with its rich relations. It is scarcely too much to say that his influence, direct or indirect, can be discerned in nearly every well-designed traditional typographical page that now appears, and that to him more than to any other man the twentieth century's great improvement in book production in Britain was due. Walker's exacting taste demanded close, even typesetting, perfect harmony between text and illustration, and excellent materials."

Sir Emery Walker.
Photo courtesy of the Emery Walker Trust

The three ideal examples of modern typography are considered to be the Kelmscott Chaucer, the Doves Bible, and the Ashendene Dante. Walker inspired the first, printed the second, and designed the type for the third. He also went on to print an number of fine books at his own press, including a translation of Homer by Lawrence of Arabia. He was a modest man who did not trumpet his own achievements, and readers today who appreciate a well-designed page are unaware that they owe a debt to this genius of typography.

Radical Pre-Raphaelites Invade Delaware

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Lady Lilith, 1866-68 (altered 1872-73)
Oil on canvas. Delaware Art Museum,
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.
Lilith, the subject of this painting, is described in Judaic literature as the first wife of Adam.
She is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children.
Note opium poppy in lower right corner.
(All Images Courtesy Of The University of Delaware.)

Before you hear about it on Fox News, we're breaking this story on Booktryst: The University of Delaware is holding a major conference about a bunch of free thinking, free loving, socialist-feminist radicals who wanted to end capitalism, imperialism, and racism. One more attempt on the part of effete, intellectual snobs to hijack American culture. This revolutionary bunch may even have invaded the sanctity of your own home. Their leader, one William Morris, said this: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." If that isn't code for "Quit shopping at Wal-Mart," I don't know what is. And the loose confederation of Delaware museums, libraries, and social (socialist?) organizations sponsoring this figures nobody will make a stink about it just because these ultra-liberals got together a few years ago. Well I'm giving you the straight dope here. Draw your own conclusions.

William Morris (1834-1896)
Design for Cover of "The Earthly Paradise," 1890.
Pen and ink drawing, Delaware Art Musuem.
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.
Twenty -four tales in verse tell of Scandinavian wanderers
who seek everlasting life with a group of Pagan Greeks.

Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, focuses on the British poet, designer and socialist William Morris and on the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late 19th century. It examines the philosophical and artistic connections between American and British artists in two radical (italics mine) movements, Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism. So right off the top we've got the University using that "r-word."

The Anglo-Saxon Review: A Quarterly Miscellany,
edited by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, March 1900.
This short-lived magazine of literature, art, and politics,
was conceived by American-born Jennie Jerome,
who married a member of the British aristocracy and acquired a title.
She perfectly embodied the English stereotype of an American Girl:
willful, glamorous, and free-living.
(One of her lovers was no less a personage than
the future king, Edward VII.)

These movements, which championed the cause of "Beauty," flourished in both the fine arts and decorative arts. A conference and related exhibitions will be held October 7 to 9, 2010, at the University of Delaware and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society of the United States, the conference will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware Library's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur’s important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum’s superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest outside Britain. It doesn't sound so subversive, until you dig a bit deeper.

Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915)
Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors: William Morris.
East Aurora, N.Y.: The Roycrofters, 1900.
Elbert Hubbard, an Indiana-born socialist,
founded an upstate New York state commune based on Morris's ideals.

Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes to be featured here include: John Ruskin, art critic, poet and sexual deviant; Dante Gabriel Rossetti painter, poet, and chloral hydrate addict; Oscar Wilde author, playwright, and homosexual; and William Morris, designer, book artist, and socialist. Their art was linked thematically and stylistically, and they have been called the first avant-garde movement in art. So essentially these guys started the whole leftist culture war on family values about 120 years ago. And they managed to infiltrate even the works of some All-American good eggs like Mark Twain and Bret Harte. (See the University of Delaware Library's exhibit: London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870-1916.)

Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Queen of the Pirate Isle:
Illustrated by Kate Greenaway,
Engraved and Printed by Edmund Evans.
London: Chatto and Windus, [1886].
John Ruskin told artist Kate Greenaway her illustrations
for this All-American work were "the best thing you've ever done."

There's even an exhibit focusing on the way in which the designs of William Morris and his partners in crime have invaded our everyday culture. The Morris Kitsch Archive is an installation created by British artist David Mabb that contains over 720 images of commercially produced objects decorated with the textile and wallpaper designs of William Morris. According to the collection's website: "Morris was the founder of the Socialist League and a standard-bearer of Socialism; he maintained a fierce hatred of capitalism and likely would be shocked to see the many money-making projects that his designs have inspired since his death." Says David Mabb, "The archive illustrates how Morris’ designs have been appropriated for a mass consumer society. The designs have become widely available at the expense of the qualities and values inherent to Morris’ original Utopian project, which offered in its vision of the fecundity of nature the hope of alternative ways of living in the world." So some us of probably have these things in our homes, and don't even know it...

Daisy Print Wellington Boot
Detail from The Morris Kitsch Archive,
2009 Laminated digital print.
(Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Tamara Henriques.)

Is a pair of these hiding in YOUR daughter's closet?

Joann Browning, associate dean for the arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware, says the conference "provides a wonderful opportunity to draw upon the rich array of resources within the arts, humanities and social sciences at the University and to engage with our community partners" in multidisciplinary discussions. "From poster art of the 1890s to bookmaking to stained glass to fashion and Oscar Wilde, the menu of events, presentations, exhibits and live performances offers something to pique everyone's interest," Browning said. "We're also thrilled that the conference will include an exhibition and gallery talk in the newly renovated Old College Gallery, as well as a live performance of Wilde's classic comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest." Clearly, the idea is to spread these revolutionary ideas to as many of the ordinary folk of Delaware as possible.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882.
La Bella Mano, 1875, Oil on canvas.
Delaware Art Museum,
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
The painting represents Venus assisted by her winged attendants.
The effect of a halo(!) is created by the convex mirror showing the bed,
which entices a present or future lover.

Ann Ardis, senior associate dean for the humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware, said the conference will bring worldwide attention to Delaware. Maybe she just never anticipated getting negative attention from everyday, God-fearing Americans who've had enough of this sort of thing. But here at Booktryst we always do our best to be fair and balanced, so you can be the judge. Do your homework, feel free to leave your comments here, and when you see it on the O'Reilly Factor or Glenn Beck, remember we had it here first.

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Previously On Booktryst: Down With Industrialism! William Morris And The Private Press Revolt.

Down With Industrialism! William Morris and the Private Press Revolt

Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (Kelmscott Press, 1892)

The Industrial Revolution had a profound effect on the world of books: mechanization made it possible to produce thousands of copies of a work quickly and inexpensively. The upside of mass production was the increased availability and affordability of books; the downside was shoddy materials and workmanship. When I first came to work in the rare book business, I was astonished to find that many of the incunables (printed before 1500) in our inventory had brighter, fresher leaves than those in 19th century books. The reason was simple: the early books were printed on a higher quality paper than the mass-produced books.

John Ruskin (Portrait Courtesy of Project Gutenberg)

The Industrial Revolution caused a backlash against mass production in many areas of British society. In the influential essay "The Nature of Gothic," John Ruskin warned, "the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages." Rusking saw the separation of intellectual and manual activity as a reinforcement of class distinctions: "gentlemen" believed manual labor was beneath them, and working men, turned into automatons by the factories, had no ownership of or pride in their work.

William Morris by G. F. Watts (1870). Portrait courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One of Ruskin's dispciples was William Morris (1834-96),who, among many other accomplishments, was the most important figure in the revival of printing in England at the end of the 19th century. As Feather says, "Morris was a remarkable man in many ways; at Oxford, he had been under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and had carried this influence into his subsequent work as an architect and designer." Morris "looked back to the Middle Ages as a period when free craftsmen, untrammeled by capitalism, pursued their avocations and produced objects which were both useful and esthetically worthwhile. He became involved with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which sought to promote guild socialism to revive this lost world. The Kelmscott Press was a product of this ethos, the immediate influence being Emery Walker's famous lecture on typography to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in November 1888."

Morris' Love is Enough (Kelmscott Press, 1897)

Seeking to revive what he considered to be the purity of printing's first century, Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891, marking the beginning of the modern private press movement. In his "Note" about the press, which took the form of the final Kelmscott book, Morris explains that he "began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters." This was an understatement of the first order: his press produced 53 titles in 66 volumes, all of them notable in some way, along with three memorable typefaces: Golden, Troy, and Chaucer.

Syr Perecyvelle of Gales (Kelmscott Press, 1895)

Many of the Kelmscott Press books were decorated with woodcut "white vine" borders designed by Morris, and were sometimes illustrated by his dear firend, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones. The type was cut and set by hand, the paper made by hand, and the leaves printed by hand. One of the Kelmscott books, a printing of Morris' Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, was printed in public as a "moving exhibit" during the 1893 Arts and Crafts Exhibition held in the New Gallery, becoming one of the exposition's most popular attractions. It was also the Kelmscott book of which the most copies (1,500) were printed. The labor intensive printing process limited the run of most books to between 250 to 500 copies on paper, with perhaps another dozen or so "deluxe" copies printed on vellum.

Syr Ysambrace (Kelmscott Press, 1897)

Kelmscott focused on printing the work of contemporary poets like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Tennyson, English classics, and medieval literature. The great work of the press was the Kelmscott Chaucer, a reprinting of the works by the author of the Canterbury Tales, lavishly illustrated with 87 engravings by Burne-Jones and borders by Morris.

The Kelmscott Chaucer (1896). Photo courtesy of the Queen's College Library

A pigskin binding in the medieval style was crafted by Douglas Cockerell. Four years in the making, it remains one of the three greatest productions of the modern private press movement. Morris not only left a legacy of some of the most beautiful books ever printed, he sparked a movement that prospered in the first quarter of the 20th century and that lingers on today, as we will discover in upsoming weeks.
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Except where otherwise noted, all images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books & Manuscripts.
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Typography Geeks and Font Snobs

 

Are you one of those people who check the colophon of the bestseller you just finished reading to see what type was used? Me too!! Do you also lose all respect for people who use Comic Sans in professional presentations? It's like we were separated at birth. Knowing geeks in both the book world and in the digital domain, I know people who will almost come to blows over typeface choices. There are situations where you cannot even bring up Comic Sans MS without starting a fight.

The most recent issue of the Fine Press Book Association's journal Parenthesis contains an article on typography design that made me think about typefaces designed by printers long dead that influence our lives today. When you pull down the font menu in your word processing program, you may see fonts named Caslon or Baskerville. Both are named for important English printers.

William Caslon (1692-1766) was an influential English typeface designer (and gunsmith) whose Caslon Foundry produced the type that was used for the first printed version of the Declaration of Independence. Variations of his attractive serif font are still in common usage.

Specimens of Caslon Typeface

John Baskerville (1706-75) followed in Caslon's footsteps, developing new styles of type and printing, and developing a process to make paper smoother and whiter, the better to display his crisp black type.

Remember John the next time you choose Baskerville Old Face from your font menu.

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century resulted in mass produced typefaces and poorer quality printing that offended the sensibilities of some, among them William Morris, leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Morris, seeking a return to the proud artisan tradition of such early printers as Nicolas Jenson and Sweynham & Pannartz, founded the Kelmscott Press to produce beautiful books printed with handset types he designed himself.

Kelmscott books were printed in three great fonts: Golden (designed for and named for Voragine's The Golden Legend), Troy, a black-letter or Gothic-style typeface, and Chaucer, the typeface used in Kelmscott's greatest production, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Friends of Morris also founded private presses and designed their own typefaces. Charles Harry St. John Hornby and his wife Cecily established the Ashendene Press, where they resurrected the beautiful Subiaco typeface used by the early Venetian printers Sweynham & Pannartz.

The Ashendene Press Life of St Francis of Assisi

Type designer and illustrator Eric Gill worked at the Golden Cockerel Press, creating typefaces and woodcuts for what was the greatest private press in the period between the two world wars. When you review your font choices in your favorite word processing program, you are likely to see at least two of Gill's creations, Gill Sans and the lovely Perpetua, my personal favorite font.


Perhaps the greatest typography geek and font snob of them all was Doves Press founder Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson. C-S had already established a name for himself as a bookbinder when he decided to venture into printing as well. He collaborated with Emery Walker, an engraver who had an impressive collection of 15th century typefaces. Together they developed the beautful Doves type, one of the greatest typographic achievements of the modern age. Below is a picture of the opening page of the Doves Bible, one of the three greatest private press books (the other two being the Kelmscott Chaucer and the Ashendene Dante).


Like the classic English eccentric he was, Cobden-Sanderson decided he could not let his typeface be abandoned to the use of the undeserving when he shut down the Doves Press in 1916. Rather than let it fall into the wrong hands, he walked out onto Hammersmith Bridge in London and threw all of the type into the Thames.

The next time you find yourself cornered by typography geeks at a bookish cocktail party, all you have to do is say, "Which was better, the Subiaco type or the Doves?" You can safely slip away while the font snobs battle it out. Don't bother to thank me. Just avoid using Comic Sans in professional correspondence and I'll consider us even.

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Images courtesy of WikiCommons.