The productions of the Curwen Press are well known to all bookmen. Much of its art work came from the pencil of the late Claude Lovat Fraser, who also designed many of the ornaments and tail-pieces. His successor, Mr P. J. Smith, was the designer of the conventional fleurons, here reproduced.
The Morland Press in Ebury Street is another of the modern presses whose craftsmanship is highly esteemed, and much of its art work is by the well-known artist F. Brangwyn.
The specimen sheet of the Pelican Press, which was established in 1917, is an ambitious one. It reproduces for the consideration and choice of its customers borders designed after those of Ratdolt of Venice, Geoffrey Tory of Paris, and some of the printers of Lyons.
In ornaments it produces a large selection modelled on the old forms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of which resembles very closely an ornament used on the title-page of John Bodenham’s Garden of the Muses, printed in 1610, and in addition to all kinds of fleurons, they reproduce the fleur-de-lys, the acorn, and various stars. They also show a fine collection of initials, French and Italian, that they claim are modelled on the best work of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
No account of Modern Printers’ Ornaments would be complete without a record of the work done by the University Presses. Marching with the times the Oxford University Press, still familiarly known as the Clarendon Press, has long since relegated the once famous Fell and Junius types to the vaults as curiosities, and has availed itself of the best founts that a modern foundry can produce. In 1766 the University had an account with William Caslon, from whom it bought both English and Foreign sorts, and at the present day no firm in England can show better craftsmanship. Whether in its many editions of the Bible and Prayer Book, its classical books, or the great dictionaries, its work in all departments—composition, excellence of spacing and presswork, and in clearness of type—is beyond all praise. Book-lovers were at one time known to complain of it as uninteresting, but under Mr Horace Hart the work of the Press became distinctly richer and more individual.
As regards ornaments the Clarendon Press still retains in use those that have served it so well. The Phœnix is one of the original Fell ornaments, as are also the following units, which are seen in a little book printed in 1922, called Some Account of the Oxford University Press. Amongst these is the triple flower, which had its origin in Augsburg in the sixteenth century. In this book also some of M. Burghers’ head-pieces are seen in a reduced form.
In 1923 Cambridge celebrated its fourth centenary of printing. Its development has been slower, perhaps, than that of the sister University. It has been hampered largely by its constitution, but in the early nineteenth century many improvements were carried out, including the erection of the Pitt Press in 1833, and to-day its work is in every way worthy of its great traditions. In the foregoing pages we have watched the growth of endeavour on the part of the printers of England to reach the highest standard in the art of book-decoration. We have seen the small printers’ ornaments grow, not only in variety of design, but also in regularity of face and clearness in reproduction. The ugly ornament, like the old-fashioned, fat-faced type, has given place to artistic and tasteful designs, coupled with growing knowledge on the part of the printers of the present day as to how they should be used, and it is a notable thing how one printer is vying with another, not only in reproducing ‘old face’ type, but in seeking their ornaments in the best productions of the fifteenth and sixteenth century presses.
Boswell was once arguing with Dr Johnson on Goldsmith’s merit as an author, and in the course of the argument Johnson said:
“Besides, Sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold....”