The use of these borders continued throughout the eighteenth century, and a good example is seen in a sermon printed in 1738, which is partly geometrical and partly floral.
They were frequently made up of fleurons and very cleverly arranged. We reproduce one taken from The Lovers’ Manual, 1753.
MODERN WORK
Chapter VIII
Modern Work
Preceding chapters of this book have dealt with the various kinds of printers’ ornaments met with in English books down to the end of the eighteenth century. We have now reached our last port of call on this eventful voyage of discovery, viz., Modern Work, which may be said to have taken its rise from the nineteenth century and the Whittingham Press. Although many fine books have been printed by William Bulmer, Archibald Hamilton, and others at the close of the eighteenth century, and by Charles Whittingham the elder during the early part of the nineteenth century, their attraction lay chiefly in the clearness of the type with which they were printed and the beauty of the illustrations, for they were wholly devoid of printers’ ornaments of any kind, so that when in 1844 the Diary of Lady Willoughby made its appearance, it may be said to have swept away all the preconceived notions as to book decoration that had been in vogue before its advent.
Charles Whittingham the younger, the printer of this book, was the nephew and successor of Charles Whittingham, the founder of the Chiswick Press in 1809, at which a library of pretty books had been printed before Charles Whittingham the younger was out of his apprenticeship.
For a time the two men were in partnership, but their natures differed so widely that in 1828 they dissolved partnership, and while the elder Whittingham continued to print at Chiswick, Charles Whittingham the younger came to London and started as a printer in Tooks Court, Chancery Lane, where the business is still carried on under the same title, though no Whittingham is now connected with it. At the same time he was ready to help his uncle in emergencies and was frequently at Chiswick. But it was while he was at Tooks Court that Charles Whittingham the younger was introduced to William Pickering, the publisher. They quickly became friends. Pickering, to quote from Mr Warren’s book,[11] was one of the very first publishers of his century to make the production of fine editions a particular branch of enterprise. “He was not only a bookseller, but a book lover. He had a taste for old books.” And again, to quote from Mr Warren, “He had a notion that if an old author were a good one, he deserved to be dressed well.” Pickering was a well-read man, of good judgment and rare taste.
Charles Whittingham the younger was a man of ideas. Liberally educated, he turned his education to good account. He also was a book lover as well as a printer, and consequently there sprang up a life-long connection between the two that resulted in the production of some notable books. Whereas Whittingham the elder had been noted for his printing of pictures, Whittingham the younger made it the peculiar “grace of his craft to bedeck books with borders, comely head-pieces, and other alluring devices. He carried this branch of his work to such an extent that you shall find nothing lovelier between book-covers until you turn back to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.” For these ornaments for his books Charles Whittingham the younger went back to the printers of the eighteenth century—to Geoffrey Tory of Paris, to Henry Bynneman and Henry Denham of London. He taught his family to appreciate their beauty and to perpetuate it, and his daughters Charlotte and Elizabeth copied and designed head and tail pieces, borders and initial letters, while another lady, Mary Byfield, who came of a family of engravers, engraved them. It is said that Pickering and Whittingham would spend their Sunday afternoons studying sixteenth century books, and the ornaments to be found in them which they afterwards adapted for the decoration of their publications.
But the Diary of Lady Willoughby was as remarkable for the type as its ornaments. Whittingham the younger wanted something better than the founts of type then in vogue, and he found it in the old face type of the Caslon foundry, i.e. the beautiful fount that had been cut by the elder Caslon more than a hundred years before, and which had aroused the admiration of that generation. It was no easy task to find the matrices, and this caused some delay in the publication of the book; but when it appeared about the middle of 1844 the Diary of Lady Willoughby was hailed as one of the best specimens of typography seen in England since the days of Baskerville and the elder Caslon. From that day to the present old face type has retained its popularity, and has been adapted by many other modern firms. Both the type and ornaments designed by Whittingham the younger are still largely used by the present proprietors of the Chiswick Press, and may be seen in two notable books published during the year 1923. The first is the fine edition of the Works of William Blake, printed for the Grolier Club of New York, in itself a testimony of the high position gained in the printing world by this press, while the collotype reproductions throughout the work are excellent. The other book is the History of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, issued to commemorate the foundation of that institution. The Whittingham ornaments and old face type are especially suitable to the character of the work.
The influence exercised by the Chiswick Press was continued until there arose on the horizon of the book world one greater than either of the Whittinghams—William Morris. Educated at Marlborough School and Exeter College, Oxford, this gifted man became a weaver of wonderful tales in prose and verse, a painter of pictures and frescoes, a designer of art tapestries, the founder of a decorating firm in which artists such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones were partners. Towards the close of his life he turned his attention to the art of printing, and founded, in the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, the Kelmscott Press.