Abstract

Fine Books - Old and New

The fallacy that William Morris is the father of modern fine-book making is as common as it is inexact. He did, at a time when printing was at a low ebb generally, set up his Kelmscott Press in England, founding it upon the principle that fine craftsmanship is essentially the product of hand work, and his object was to eliminate machinery as much as he possibly could. For a style in his work he went back to the beginnings of printing, taking the Gothic as his source, and allowing it to govern his design of types and his use of decoration on the printed page. English printing had taken a rather sickening drop in quality after the Pickering revival of Caslon's types about 1845-1860, and the books which C. H. O. Daniel printed at his press in the old-style Fell types of the Oxford University Press, after 1877, though noticeably charming, were not strong enough or striking enough to start a new movement in the art.