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The
Heritage of the Modern Printer
By
MARGARET BINGHAM STILLWELL

H.P.CLIFFORD.
New York
1916
REPRINTED DECEMBER 1916
FROM THE
BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
OF
OCTOBER 1916
form p-so [xii-4-16 5cl
1 Z
151
.S86
1
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
T came at vi van
TH
HE "Revival of Printing," which began about twenty-five years ago,
came at a time when the art of bookmaking had become so commercial-
ized, in the haste and competition of the nineteenth century, that it had
practically forfeited its right to be termed an Art. The movement is, there-
fore, most appropriately called a "Revival" for it was started in the endeavor
to print modern books equal in beauty and in workmanship to the noblest
products in the history of printing.
The invention of movable type in the middle of the fifteenth century
was an innovation which did not at the time materially affect bookmaking as
an Art. Through generation after generation of painstaking effort the scribes
and illuminators had achieved a perfection in bookmaking which has never
been surpassed. The early printers did not have to grope their way along.
As scholars and as men of literary tastes they were already familiar with
some of the most beautiful books which the world has ever seen. It remained
for them to adapt the new invention to standards already well established.
The monumental works issued from their presses bear witness to their success,
but competition was not lacking in their work. There was the keenest rivalry
between the transcribers and illuminators on the one hand, and the printers
of movable type on the other. It was a long struggle, and until the art of
printing had finally superseded that of manuscript making, the printers were
forced to prove themselves capable in every way of living up to the standards
maintained by those skilled craftsmen who so zealously fought for the continu-
ance of their trade. When it was over, competition of another sort arose
between the printers themselves - and this competition gave rise to the prac-
tice of economy in time and in material. Former standards were swept aside
in industrial struggle and there began a process of deterioration which, with
a few exceptions, was continuous in its growth until well toward the end of
the nineteenth century.
By the end of the eighteenth century Caslon type, which, in its straight-
forward way, had lent something of charm to English printed books, was
already out of style. Shaded letters after the manner of a certain specie of
penmanship, first introduced by Baskerville, became the fashion in type, and
for purposes of economy in space these letters were re-cut from time to time
in narrower and taller founts. Title-pages, if not actually engraved, were
printed in type designed to look like copperplate. The accepted method of
[3]
333866
4
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
beautifying a book was by interleaving it heavily with plates, on the apparent
theory that the more plates the more beautiful the book. In 1844, however,
the younger Whittingham revived the Caslon type in his work at the Chiswick
Press and reintroduced ornamental initial letters in the text, such as had been
used in books of the sixteenth century. Both he and William Pickering, the
publisher, used their own good sense, neither following the past in servile
imitation, nor allowing themselves to be bound to the fashion of the day.
Although Chiswick books from that time had a certain influence upon contem-
porary printing, they did not effectually turn the tide. Type, in general, became
more evenly tinted, to be sure, and ornamental letters and headbands were
used as decorations. But the latter soon degenerated into meaningless type
ornaments of rococo origin. Occasionally, books of a higher order were issued.
The Rev. C. H. O. Daniel, for instance, issued some genuinely attractive
little books at his private press in Oxford, and Mr. Herbert P. Horne and
Selwyn Image together published in the late eighties a magazine, called “The
Hobby-Horse," in which especial care was given to the printing. The real
impetus to the revival of fine printing came in the establishment of the Kelm-
scott Press in 1891. Horace Walpole, a hundred years before, had attempted
to produce beautiful books, in limited edition, at his Strawberry Hill Press.
His standards of beauty were according to those of his day. William Morris
first tried to produce beautiful books at the Chiswick Press.
his own ideals, he cast off stereotyped methods, and set himself the task of
producing modern books according to the standards of the master printers
of the fifteenth century.
Failing to satisfy
The establishment of the Kelmscott Press was the culmination of three
factors in Morris's own personality—his appreciation of the noblest of human
thoughts as expressed in literature and in art; his interest in the practical
working out of certain industrial ideals; and his passion for the creation of
the Beautiful. He had struggled with British commercialism for years. He
had attacked various crafts one after another, and had demonstrated that,
in each case, industrial changes for the better were possible. Through social-
ism he had sought to establish conditions in which Art could live. His aim
was industrial revolution through reform, and it was only when an aggressive
policy was adopted that he withdrew his support from the Socialistic party.
To him, the various crafts were closely allied, because each was but another
method of expressing Beauty, and he was as much the master of one craft as
of another. In his trades of interior decorator and printer, he was both work-
man and designer; as a writer, he was poet, essayist and translator. In what-
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
5
ever came from his hand, he combined two factors - his own creative genius.
and the best that he found in the similar products of the past. Therein lay his
conservatism.
• WILLIAM · MORRIS ·
Although the idea of founding a press had evidently long been in his
mind, it seems clear as we review the various activities of his life that, until
those last years, the time
was not yet ripe, for it is
through his examples of
fine printing, perhaps more
than in any other way, that
Morris was able to trans-
mit to the world something
of his own ideals; his own
spontaneous, yet conserva-
tive, personality.

In the early sixties,
Morris had taken up the
study of woodcuts for the
purpose of book illustration.
In the next decade, he began
to devote much time to the
study of ancient illuminated
service books, the results of
which appeared in his ex-
quisitely illuminated copies
of Horace and Omar Khay-
yam. During the eighties,
he had published several
books at the Chiswick Press
in which he had tried to adapt the means at hand to the best possible use.
Convinced that his ideal could not be achieved in this way, he set out to design
his own type. "There was only one source," he wrote, in regard to the design-
ing of his Golden Type, "from which to take the examples of this perfected
Roman type, the works of the printers of the Fifteenth Century, of whom
Nicolas Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters from
1470 to 1476.” So from photographic enlargements. Morris studied Jenson's
type and redrew his designs until he mastered the essence of it. In 1889,
The portrait of William Morris reproduced above is from a wood-cut by R. Bryden. from The Book-
Lover. May-June, 1902. The view of his library at Kelmscott House is from Mackail's Life of William
Morris. The picture of the Kelmscott Press, on the title-page, is from William Morris, by Vallance.
6
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
he had begun a systematic collection of the best examples of the early printers'
work in order that he might study the make-up and "build" more thoroughly
than from the specimens of incunabula which he already possessed. It was
from these books that he deduced his laws for fine printing-"letter pure
in form; severe, without needless excrescences; solid, without the thickening
and thinning of the line which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern
type, and which makes it difficult to read; and not compressed laterally. As
for margin, the inner always the narrowest, the top somewhat wider, the
outside (fore-edge) wider still and the bottom widest of all, a rule never
departed from in Mediaeval books, written or printed" the technical side
of which, Morris explains in great detail in his essay on "The Ideal Book."
The first printers had put into their books the best that they had found
in the bookmaking of the past. To the manuscript makers and the skilled
illuminators, therefore, is due the grace and vigor in the type designed by
the best of the early printers and in the type — similar, although somewhat
modified in form — which appears in the best of modern books. From them,
we inherit the desire to give to the printed page that evenness of color and
regularity of spacing for which they strove in painstaking hand labor. And
to them we owe the idea, perhaps greatest of all, that the two pages of the
open book are a unit in which a well proportioned margin should surround
the blocks of type — so that the hand holding the book may not soil the text.
The paper used in the Kelmscott paper-copies was made expressly for
Morris, hand woven from linen rags and successfully modelled, after much
experimentation, upon a Bolognese paper of about 1473. It is fine grained,
fairly thin yet tough, and it has a clean, pleasant feeling to the hand. Accord-
ing to its grade or size, it was water-marked with a conventional primrose,
a perch bearing a spray, or an apple — each water-mark supported by the
initials "W" and "M." Morris intended to make his own ink in course of
time, and it is very probable that he would have accomplished this also if
his death had not brought his work so suddenly to a close.
The first Kelmscott book, which appeared in the spring of 1891, was
in the Golden Type, the Roman fount which Morris based upon his study
of Jenson. Before the end of the year, another fount was ready for use.
This was Gothic, based upon the type of the early German printers, notably
Schoeffer, Zainer and Koberger; and called the Troy, from the title of the
first book in which it appeared. Within a few years this Troy Type was
re-cast in a fount of smaller size and used in the sumptuous folio of 1896,
issued only a short time before Morris's death the Chaucer, from which
this small-sized Gothic type took its name.
-
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
7
Upon the title-pages of his books, Morris printed only such statements
as referred directly to the subject matter, after the manner of the so-called
"label-title" which came into being about 1490. The facts regarding the
production of the book, the printer, place and date, nowadays contained
generally in the imprint at the bottom of the title-page, Morris reserved for
the end of the volume, like the colophons used by the manuscript makers and
the early printers. The placing of these details, whether all on the title-page

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LIBRARY, KELMSCOTT HOUSE, HAMMERSMITH
or divided into title-heading and colophon, is of course purely arbitrary. There
is no absolute right or wrong in the matter. Yet much may be said for the
logic of the latter arrangement.
One of the first to catch the spirit of Morris's venture was Mr. Charles
Ricketts. Like Morris, Mr. Ricketts began his career as printer by trying
to create beautiful books with the printers' outfit of the day, and like him
he came to the conclusion that success could not be attained under conditions
as they were. It was several years after Morris began to produce his Kelm-
scott books before Mr. Ricketts began to work out designs for a fount of
his own.
Between 1896 and 1904, when the last book from the so-called
8
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Vale Press was issued, he designed three sets of type- the Vale, the Avon
and the Kings founts. In his theory of type-design, however, Mr. Ricketts
differed fundamentally from Morris. In the work of the early printers
Morris saw the crystallization of the best that had been achieved by the manu-
script makers from whom he likewise sought inspiration, and in his intense
love for all that was Mediaeval he failed to realize that all might not share
his passion. In Mr. Ricketts's type there is a boldness and a precision of out-
line not found in the Kelmscott books, for, as he himself has said, he conceived
his types as forms cut in metal and in his study of the early printers' books
he felt "that sense of logic, balance, and control which characterised the
Renaissance itself."
Meanwhile, when the Kelmscott Press was broken up shortly after
Morris's death, the Guild of Handicraft of which Mr. C. R. Ashbee was the
leading spirit, purchased two of Morris's hand-presses. Up to that time the
Guild had not included printing among its crafts, because in view of the
work done by the Kelmscott and the Vale presses, Mr. Ashbee felt that a
new attempt in that direction would seem almost "an impertinence," but when
Morris died the possibility of a press presented itself in a new light. The
first books issued at this new Essex House Press were in Caslon type. In
1901 and 1903, respectively, Mr. Ashbee's Endeavour and Prayer Book Types
appeared, both of which adhere more closely to the characteristics of manu-
script lettering than any other type designed during the "Revival."
In 1901, the first book was issued from the newly established Doves
Press, founded by two of Morris's most intimate associates, Mr. T. J. Cobden-
Sanderson and Mr. Emery Walker. The type which, like Morris's, was
modelled after Jenson's has a certain luminous quality — a combination of
delicacy and firmness which, both in type-design and in press work, shows the
hand of a master. Surrounding the text is a wealth of margin. In propor-
tion it does not seem to differ materially from that used by all printers of
beautiful books. It is seemingly more liberal because of the square octavo
page characteristic of the Doves Press books, and its whiteness is emphasized
by the gray block of text, unbroken by ornament, and embellished with only
an occasional, simple initial-letter so carefully placed that the line of margin
is undisturbed.
This press was founded "to attack the problem of pure Typography" and
unfortunately, for booklovers, the notes of its death song have already sounded.
Various masterpieces of literary thought have meanwhile been produced; for
Mr. Cobden-Sanderson believes that "Whether by the Doves Press or some
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
9
other Press or Presses, such monumental production, expressive of man's
admiration, is a legitimate ambition and a public duty."
Although not so frequently mentioned as some others, the name of Emery
Walker should be among those most honored in the "Revival of Printing."
It was to him, we are told, that Morris confided his ideals and hopes when
opening his Press, and to him that Morris went for counsel, relying much
upon his taste and sympathetic understanding of the project. As early as
1888, Mr. Walker published an essay on fine printing and he was one with
Morris in the early attempt to print satisfactory books at the Chiswick Press.
A year after he had entered into partnership with Mr. Cobden-Sanderson at
the Doves Press, Mr. Walker it is said assisted in designing the exceed-
ingly beautiful fount, based on Sweynheym and Pannartz, for Mr. Hornby's
Ashendene Press at Chelsea - a press which has made an additional contri-
bution in the happy combination of colored initials with printed text. And
now we hear that Mr. Walker is about to embark on a new printing venture.
Another press which has come to take a prominent place in the "Revival
of Printing" was started by Lucien Pissarro at Epping. Pissarro was originally
a wood engraver of Eragny, Normandy, who took up the study of typography
in the early nineties. In 1896, he began the publication of books in the Vale
type, through the courtesy of Mr. Ricketts. Seven years later, together with
his wife, he brought forth their first book in the Brook Type, “A Brief Account
of the Origin of the Eragny Press." Naturally the possibility of decorating
their books with woodcuts made a strong appeal. The quaint, personal quality
of their illustrations and ornaments is often very attractive, especially in
cases where the woodcuts are hand-colored.
In America, the first to feel the influence of the "Revival" were Mr.
D. Berkeley Updike of the Merrymount Press, and Mr. Bruce Rogers who
was at that time at the Riverside Press and is now about to combine with
Mr. Walker in London. The names of both are frequently included among
those of the printers of this school of private presses. Yet they may almost
be said to have started a school of their own, for theirs was the happy faculty
of absorbing the real essence of the "Revival" and of translating it at once
into terms of commercial printing; with the result, that their books combine
real charm with what is at the same time practicable in every sense of the
word. The same might now be said of a score of other presses in America,
and of equally conspicuous British houses, which have since applied the laws
of fine printing to the regular trade and have bettered the product of their
presses according to the measure of their success in understanding its prin-
ciples. Like every movement of its kind, the "Revival of Printing" has
12.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
attracted a host of followers, many of whom, seeing the truth underlying it
all, are striving to achieve in spite of certain handicaps. Others, seeing merely
the superficial, have caught at various characteristics and stereotyped them
into meaningless convention.
The remarkable thing is that those presses which may properly be said
to belong to the "Revival of Printing," besides following the laws deduced.
by their "master-printer," have each made some individual contribution to the
movement. In this way, possibly more than in any other, is shown the power
of Morris's influence. He looked to the Past for inspiration, and gaining
it combined with it his own personality in his Kelmscott books. And through
him as interpreter and guide, the printers of his school have been able not
only to take the best from the Past and to carry out his ideals for the Book
Beautiful, but to add to this heritage something of themselves.
Occasionally a few books belonging to the "Revival" appear in an auction
room or are listed in a bookseller's catalogue. A certain number are recorded
annually in Slater, Karslake and American Book-Prices Current. Not many
copies are on the market, however, because the books were issued in limited
edition and many of them are still on the shelves of their original purchasers.
The prices which these books command, although not as yet prohibitive, raise
them above the reach of the average buyer and give them place in the libraries
of those booklovers who have sufficient means to rank as collectors.
The public library, striving to meet demands for the latest books on
the War, and for up-to-date works of science and economics, can hardly be
expected to devote even a portion of its income to the purchase of books whose
value to the public is more as works of art than for actual utility. Yet, if the
library is to fulfill its function of making available to the public the knowl-
edge of the great achievements in the world's development, it needs these
books. It must rely, then, upon the generosity of its friends.
Fortunately, in our own case, several of the finest specimens among the
books of the "Revival" have already found their way to our shelves, but
their number is very few.
It is not possible nor desirable for the printer at the commercial press
to live up to the rather fastidious standards of the "Revival" itself. The type
designed for these presses, for instance, is beautiful when examined letter
by letter, but on the full page printed without leading and with little space
between the words, as is characteristic of the majority of their books, it can-
not be read with ease. The use of a small leaf or ornament between sentences
to mark a change in thought and yet avoid breaking the text into paragraphs,
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
13
which has rather aptly been described as a “glorified full-stop," gives an even
tone of color to the page which is pleasing enough in itself. In continuous
reading, the eye becomes wearied of the unbroken pages and longs for the
occasional short line and the space at the end of the paragraph. And again,
the elaborate initial letters and ornamental borders which adorn many of
these books are graceful in design and admirably executed, though hardly
suited to the subject matter or character of the average books of today.
Morris printed Mediaeval subjects in a Mediaeval way, which was most fitting,
but any one of his charming ornamental initials printed by machinery and
interjected into a modern page of Caslon would be anything but appropriate.
It is such peculiarities, however, which first strike the eye as it surveys
the books of the "Revival," and which appeal as strongly to the dilettante
as they rebuff the more practically minded. The dilettante snatches at these
superfluities and copies them until they lose whatever of beauty and meaning
they originally possessed. The other rejects the books en masse and, with-
out seeing beyond the surface, condemns them as specimens of a passing
fad. Whereas, back of it all there are certain laws of book-building which
these books exemplify and it is these laws re-discovered and practised by the
"Revival" which have had so striking an influence upon modern bookmaking.
Individual letters of pure form, grouped in words which are separated
by enough space to be quite distinct from one another; ink, in full black, care-
fully distributed, and printed with even impression; paper of good quality;
sufficient margin to set off the text; illustrations or ornaments not incongru-
ous with the subject matter and so placed that the harmony and balance of
the two pages of the open book are not destroyed - these are the hallmarks
of a book well printed. These are laws which apply to every book—whether
printed from specially designed type on hand-made paper, or in linotype on
commercial paper.
Swift's "Advice to Grub-Street Writers,"
"Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried,
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide,"
is all very well so far as it goes. It leads rather to Dibdin's love for "tall
copies" than to the real truth of the matter. It is not the width of the margin
which makes a book attractive. It is its proportionate width. It must not be
so narrow in proportion to the text that the book has a cropped and shorn
appearance. On the other hand, it must not be so wide that the text seems
14
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
lost in a mass of over-conspicuous white. There is a happy mean between
these two extremes, and it is only when this point is reached that real beauty
is attained.
The laws of symmetry, balance and rhythm underly all art and one or
more are essential in the make-up of every object which is truly beautiful.
In book-building the application of these laws is perhaps not so obvious as
in some forms of art, yet nevertheless they obtain here as elsewhere- sym-
metry, in exactness of arrangement and in accurate spacing; balance, in the
nice arrangement of text and margin, so that the two pages of the open book.
form an artistic whole; and rhythm in the even impression of type and har-
monious relation between the type and whatever of ornament or illustration
the book contains, so that as the leaves are turned, page by page, the effect
is that of a harmonious mass of gray set in relief by the surrounding white
of the margins.
Whether Morris created the spirit of our time or whether he was himself
the product of his time, it would be hard to determine, especially from so close
a perspective. That the yeast was already at work we know. DeVinne and
William Blades had long been writing upon the history of typography. On
the Continent, a similar interest was manifest. Ruskin and Oscar Wilde had
earnestly sought Truth and Simplicity as the essence of Beauty. Other
printers, besides Morris, had tried to apply these principles to book-building
and had been confronted with the unyielding methods of commercial printing
in the late nineteenth century. But it was Morris who first dared to brush
aside these conditions and to go to the root of the matter for himself.
Whatever its cause, dating from about 1900, a change seems gradually
to have come over the spirit of our printing. Beauty may be found not only
among the sumptuous books issued by booklovers' societies and clubs, but in
those from the majority of English and American publishing houses, not to
mention similar specimens of fine printing published outside these two coun-
tries. We rarely see the cheap octavo with its cramped and oftentimes blurred
type printed on inferior paper, which in its day served the purpose of making
good literature available at a small cost. Today, our publishing houses find
it possible to give us, at a low figure, books of a clear, readable type, well
spaced and evenly printed upon paper of a considerably better grade. Instead
of books illustrated, we have illustrated books and there is as wide a chasm
between the artistic value of these terms as the distance between the poles.
Instead of half-tones on dissimilar paper, line-cut drawings are often used.
Even in our passing books of fiction, the text is surrounded by a pleasing
width of margin. Not infrequently the margins at the outer sides and bottom
THE HERITAGE OF THE MODERN PRINTER
15
are a bit wider than at the top above the running title — and even the fraction
of an inch added to the space below the text adds grace and beauty to the
printed page.
It was William Morris who maintained, after studying the works of the
master printers, that a book to be beautiful must be "architectural" in its
build. It is undoubtedly to the influence of his Kelmscott books, and of
those produced by the printers of the subsequent "Revival of Printing," that
we owe much of the improved appearance of our books today. These private
presses, through years of endeavor, produced books which are the modern
exponent of the best that had been achieved in the history of printing. The
commercial printer had only to study their methods and to adopt whatever
he found feasible, if he would raise the standard of his press. And now it
remains to be seen just what will be the outcome of this new venture in fine
printing, by Mr. Emery Walker and Mr. Bruce Rogers.

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