Text Page of Kelmscott Chaucer, London, 1896 (15 × 10¼ inches)
I have never felt that the Kelmscott volumes were books at all, but were, rather, supreme examples of a master-decorator’s taste and skill. After all, a book is made to read, and the Kelmscott Chaucer is made to be looked at. The principles which should control the design of the ideal book as laid down by William Morris cannot be improved upon, but when he undertook to put them into execution he found himself so wholly under the control of his decorating tendencies that he departed far from his text. William Morris’ work is far greater than is shown in the volumes he printed. He awoke throughout the world an interest in printing as an art beyond what any other man has ever accomplished, the results of which have been a vital factor in bringing modern bookmaking to its present high estate.
It remained for T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, Morris’ friend, admirer, and disciple, to put Morris’ principles into operation at the Doves Press, London, supplemented by Emery Walker, who designed the Doves type,—to me the most beautiful type face in existence. Cobden-Sanderson, undisturbed by counter interests, plodded along, producing volumes into which he translated Morris’ ideals far more consistently than did Morris himself. “The Book Beautiful,” Cobden-Sanderson wrote in his little masterpiece, The Ideal Book, “is a composite thing made up of many parts and may be made beautiful by the beauty of each of its parts—its literary content, its material or materials, its writing or printing, its illumination or illustration, its binding and decoration—of each of its parts in subordination to the whole which collectively they constitute; or it may be made beautiful by the supreme beauty of one or more of its parts, all the other parts subordinating or even effacing themselves for the sake of this one or more, and each in turn being capable of playing this supreme part and each in its own peculiar and characteristic way. On the other hand each contributory craft may usurp the functions of the rest and of the whole, and growing beautiful beyond all bounds ruin for its own the common cause.”
The Doves Bible is Cobden-Sanderson’s masterpiece, and one turns to it with relief after the riotous beauty of the Morris pages. It is printed throughout in one size of type with no leads between the lines and with no paragraphs, the divisions being indicated by heavy paragraph marks. The only decorative feature of any description consists of exceedingly graceful initial letters at the beginning of each new book. The type is based flatly upon Jenson’s Roman face, and exactly answers Morris’ definition of the type ideal, “Pure in form, severe, without needless excrescences, solid without the thickening and thinning of the lines, and not compressed laterally.” The presswork is superb.
Title Page of Doves Bible, London, 1905 (8 × 6 inches)
Text Page of Doves Bible, London, 1905 (8 × 6 inches)