English printers' ornaments

by Henry R. Plomer

In the early part of the present year the Directors of the Medici Society arranged an exhibition of Twentieth Century Books at the Grafton Galleries in London. More than half the exhibits were from English presses, and the general impression conveyed by that exhibition was, that a great improvement in craftsmanship had taken place all round in the last five and twenty years. What our printers and type-founders can do at the present day in the way of book decoration will be seen by a study of the following pages, in which, by the kindness of the various firms, we are able to bring together a representative collection of modern Printers’ Ornaments.

The modern Caslon foundry still carried on by H. W. Caslon & Co. in Chiswell Street, to which William Caslon the first transferred his business in 1734, is still one of the leading foundries in this country. After his death his son William the second reigned in his stead and carried on the traditions of the foundry, and was in due course succeeded by his son William the third, who in 1792 gave up his interest in the business to his mother and his brother Henry’s widow. On the death of Mrs William Caslon her will was disputed, and as a result the business was put up to auction and secured by Mrs Henry Caslon for the modest sum of £520. Seven years before a one-third share in the business was worth £3000. The cause of this drop was, says Mr J. F. McRae, in his Two Centuries of Type-founding: (1) Depreciation in the value of the stock; (2) competition; (3) a reluctance to run up the price against a widow.

Undoubtedly the main cause was a change in public taste. Even beauty palls after a time, and the public had taken up with Bodoni and other much inferior faces, and this neglect lasted for nearly a century.

In 1844 Messrs Charles Whittingham the younger and Thomas Longman brought about a revival of interest in the Caslon Old Face type by their publication of The Diary of the Lady Willoughby. To quote again from Mr Warren’s book: “Matrices that had been reposing in the vaults of the Caslon foundry for nearly three generations were refitted to moulds, and made to serve for the casting of type” (p. 238).

But the firm was not yet through its difficulties. In 1865 a strike of some of the workmen, on a question of wages, was followed by a lock-out that lasted for eight months and brought its fortunes to their lowest ebb. Then in 1872 Mr Thomas W. Smith, who had for some years acted as traveller to the foundry, was asked to take over the management. His position was a difficult one. Old fashions die hard, and the foreman and many of the workmen had been with the firm all their lives and resented change. But Mr Smith persevered, his object being, as he himself declared, to work up arrears of production and to rescue the Specimen Book from the miserable and degraded state to which it had fallen.

His success was complete, and the firm to-day stands as high as ever it did, thanks mainly, no doubt, to the great popularity of the Caslon Old Face. In the matter of ornaments it is only necessary to compare the Specimen Book of 1842 with that of 1910 to show how great had been the improvement in the interval, an improvement that the examples have shown of the firm’s work at the present day fully bear out.

Between the years 1883 and 1900 the English Illustrated Magazine made a feature of its ornaments. These included reproductions of famous head and tail pieces and initials by various foreign masters of the sixteenth century belonging to the French, German, and Dutch schools, the work of Aldus, Theodoric de Bry, and Holbein; nor were native artists neglected. Between 1883 and 1887 we find some excellent head-pieces by A. P. Hughes. In July 1889 appeared a tail-piece from the pencil of Sir E. Burne-Jones, followed by a good decorative head-piece by Matilda Stokes. In 1893–94 the work of Lawrence Housman begins to appear. The initials used in Bibliographica and in the various monographs, etc., of the Bibliographical Society down to the present time were designed by him, and are worthy to rank with the best art work of the early Italian school.

Walter Crane and Emery Walker were other well-known contributors to the English Illustrated Magazine, and by the kindness of Messrs R. & R. Clark one of Mr Crane’s decorative blocks is here reproduced.

Akin to the Caslon Foundry, and also linked up with that of John Baskerville of Birmingham, is the firm of Stephenson, Blake & Co., of Sheffield, Manchester, and London, which had its origin in the firm of Blake, Garnett & Co., founded in 1819. It was from the office of Stephenson, Blake & Co. that Mr T. W. Smith passed to the Caslon Foundry, and it was on his suggestion that a branch of the firm was established in London. The firm has to-day a large assortment of flowers, borders, and ornaments, both well designed and well cast. Many of the old forms are retained and some variations of the fleuron introduced.

Messrs Shanks, of Red Lion Square, have sent some head and tail pieces shown in their most recent specimen. These, both in design and treatment, recall French work of the sixteenth century, while the Cubist idea that marks their Athenian border brings us back to the twentieth century.