Pickering s edition of the Elements of Euclid is a landmark of book design.

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1 Chapter Ten: The Arts and Crafts Movement Over the course of the 19th century, the quality of book design and production declined by a fairly large amount. It was the heyday of industrialized production and attention to fine book design and production was just not there. One exception were the books published by English publisher William Pickering. He established his own bookshop by the time he was 24, and because of his deep love of books, as his exceptional scholarship, began publishing on his own shortly thereafter. Pickering played an important role in the separation of graphic design from the actual printing and production. He designed woodblock ornaments, initials and illustrations, but then commissioned the woodcarvers to actually produce them. He designed books... From layout, type selection right on through to illustration but commissioned printers to do the work under his close personal supervision. The Diamond Classics were a series of miniature books produced by Pickering from 1820 to Pickering s edition of the Elements of Euclid is a landmark of book design. Diagrams and symbols are printed in brilliant primary colors, and these colors replaced traditional alphabet labeling to identify the lines, shapes, and forms in the geometry lessons contained in the book. It was said that geometry could be learned in one-third the time compared to traditional text books. It also seems to anticipate the geometric abstract art of the 20th century. Despite the efforts of Pickering and a scant few others, book design declined during the 1800 s. But at the very end of the century a cook-design renaissance began. This revival, which first treated the book as a limited edition art object, and then eventually influenced commercial production was largely the result of what is call the Arts and Crafts movement. Ultimately, the Arts and Crafts movement took hold a reaction against the social, moral, and artistic confusion of the industrial revolution. Groups began to form that advocated a return to design and handicraft and they abhorred the cheap and nasty mass-produced goods of the Victorian Era. The basis of the philosophy of the movement was inspired by the writings of John Ruskin. Ruskin rejected the mercantile economy and pointed toward the union of art and labor in service to society.

2 According to Ruskin, a process of separating art from society had begun after the Renaissance. Industrialization and technology caused this gradual severance to reach a critical stage, isolating the artist from the rest of humanity. Underlying Ruskin s theory was his fervent belief that beautiful things were valuable and useful precisely because they were beautiful. In addition, Ruskin became concerned for social justice, advocating for improved housing for industrial workers, a national education system and retirement benefits for the elderly. William Morris, who wholeheartedly embraced Ruskin s ideas, ultimately became the defacto leader of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris came from a well-off family, went to University, and as well as being a writer and artist, his family estate provided a more than generous income so he could pursue his intellectual and creative pursuits. After he married Jane Burden, the daughter of his stableman, he began to set up his home. And in doing that, became frustrated with the state of Victorian product and furniture design. So he proceeded to design, and supervise the execution of furniture, stained glass and tapestries for his home. As a result of this experience, Morris joined with six friends and began an art-decorating company. They assembled craftsmen and produced hand-crafted items including furniture cabinet makers, weavers and dyers, stained glass fabricators, and potters and tile-makers. Morris himself created over 500 pattern designs for wallpapers, textiles, carpets, and tapestries. Deeply concerned about the problems of industrialization and the factory system, Morris tried to implement Ruskin s ideas: the tastelessness of mass-produced goods and the lack of honest craftsmanship might be addressed by a reunion of art with craft. Art and craft might combine to create beautiful objects, from building to bedding; workers might find joy in their work once again, and the man-made environment -- which had declined in industrial cities of squalid, dismal tenements filled with tacky manufactured goods -- could be revitalized.

3 A moral concern over the exploitation of the poor lead Morris to embrace socialism. Dismay over the wanton destruction of the architectural heritage motivated him to found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Disgust at the false and misleading claims of advertising caused him to become involved win the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising, which confronted offenders directly. During the 1880 s and 1890s the Arts and Crafts movement was underpinned by a number of societies and guilds that sought to establish democratic artistic communities united for the common good. A 26 year old architect named Arther Mackmurdo met William Morris and became inspired by his ideas. Mackmurdo ended up leading a young group of artists and designers who banded together in 1882 to establish the Century Guild. The goal of the Century Guild was to elevate the design arts to take their rightful place beside painting and sculpture. Their design sensibilities included incorporating both Renaissance and Japanese ideas into their work. Their designs provide one of the links between the arts and crafts movement and floral stylization of Art Nouveau. The Century Guild began publishing the Hobby Horse in the first finely printed magazine devoted exclusively to the visual arts. The passion for medieval design is reflected in the publication... However, several designs by Mackmurdo are pure art nouveau. Mackmurdo s fabric design, trademark design and other design elements are definitely ahead of their time as art nouveau would not really appear for another decade. The Hobby Horse was produced under the tutelage of master printer and typography Sir Emery Walker at the Chiswick Press.

4 Careful layout and typesetting, handmade paper and intricate woodblock illustrations reflect the growing interest in graphic design with the Arts & Crafts movement. Mackmurdo was also a forerunner of the Private Press Movement. The Private Press was is not to be confused with amateur or hobby presses. Rather, it was a design and printing movement advocating an aesthetic concern for the design and production of beautiful books. It sought to regain the design standards, high-quality materials, and careful workmanship of printing that existed before the Industrial Revolution. The Century Guild eventually disbanded in The guild was all about collaborative projects and it s members had become preoccupied with their own individual artistic pursuits. Herbert Horne, one of the Century Guild members went on to design books with classic simplicity and restraint. Another group, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society formed in late 1888 and inspired William Morris to get involved to a greater extent with typography and printing. Morris worked and created a new font which called Golden -- it was based on Nicolas Jensen s font that had been created back in After creating Golden, Morris proceeded to rescue and old hand-press and set it up in a house that Morris purchased near Kelmscott Manor in Hammersmith. He named his new enterprise Kelmscott Press. Morris first production was the Story of the Glittering Plain, (his own piece of writing) with illustrations by Walter Crane. His plan was to print merely 20 copies, but word spread and he eventually ended up printing 300 and an additional 6 more on vellum. The Kelmscott Press eventually disbanded in 1898, 2 years after Morris death, but had produced over 18 thousand volumes of 53 different titles. And it had influenced design and typography and notions of quality world-wide. During the life of Kelmscott Press, Morris drew purposeful inspiration from fonts designed by the old masters like Peter Scheffler, Anton Koberger and Gunther Zainer like he had with Jensen. The Kelmscott Press was committed to recapturing the beauty of Medieval books: hand-printing, hand-made paper, hand-cut woodblocks and initials. They had turned the book into an art form.

5 The Kelmscott Press ambitious The Works of Geoffry Chaucer was four-years in the making and contained 87 hand-cut woodblock illustrations. In addition, Morris designed over 200 initial letters for use in the book. They printed 425 copies and 13 on vellum. William Morris died 4 months after the project was completed, at the age of 62. His paradox was two fold: Morris took refuge in the handicraft of the past, yet he charted the design sensibilities of the future... And Morris taught that design could bring art to the working class, yet his work, from furniture design to the beautiful books he created, were only available to the wealthy. William Morris and the Kelmscott Press had a profound influence on a whole new generation of graphic and book designers. Walter Crane, as evidenced in these layout sketches for the Basis of Design, demonstrates Morris influence -- visualizing the two-page spread... Two separate pages viewed as a visual whole. An American printer, Daniel Berkley Updike, wan an ardent admirer of Kelmscott Press and that admiration is apparent in the 1896 Merryment Press edition of the Altar Book. Ironically, Morris, who was the crusader for handicraft, became the inspiration for a revival of fine book design that filtered into commercial printing. Morris books were conceived with readability in mind and his regeneration of older typefaces touched off a major improvement in commercial design. Yet another group formed in 1888: The Guild of Handicraft, founded by Charles R. Ashbee, a graphic designers, jeweler and silversmith. This guild created a school of handicraft that unified the teaching of design and theory with workshop experience. Ashbee sought to restore the old holistic experience of apprenticeship, which had been destroyed by the subdivision of labor and mechanized production. The school, unable to get support from either the government or from private sources, folded within seven years, the Guild Of Handicraft itself flourished as a cooperative where workers shared in both governance and profits. It was based in both socialism and the Arts and Crafts Movement, and they leased an old mansion called the Essex House. When Morris died, Ashbee attempted to purchase all of the Kelmscott Press printing assets... Type, the woodcuts and the ornaments. But the British museum got them instead and preserved them for posterity. Ashbee instead was allowed to purchase all of the actual printing equipment that was at Kelmscott Press and was also able to hire most of it s key personnel. With that, he created the Essex House Press.

6 The masterpiece of the Essex House Press was a Psalter published in Ashbee created a graphic format for each Psalm: a roman numeral, the Latin title in red capitals, and English description title in black capitals, and illustrated woodcut initial. In that same year, 1902, the Guild moved to the rural village of Chipping Campden and turned it into a communal society for it s guild workers. And expensive endeavor, it forced the guild into bankruptcy... But most of the workers continued to live and work there independently. After World War I Ashbee began to question his own belief that industrial manufacturing was completely evil. Eventually he embraced the industrial revolution in both thought and design sensibilities. PRIVATE PRESSES In 1900 the bookbinder T.J. Coben-Sanderson joined Emery Walker and established the Doves Press with the premise of The whole duty of typography is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or image intended to be conveyed by the Author. Another private press, established in 1895 by C.H. Hornby called the Ashendene Press was an example of exceptional beauty and quality in book design. The American Elbert Hubbard established his private press called Roycroft Press and Roycroft shops in East Aurora, New York. The Roycroft community became a popular tourist attraction where 400 employees created artistic home furnishings, copper-ware, leather goods, and printed material. His books showed an extreme influence from the Kelmscott Press. Hubbard s critics claimed he tarnished the whole Arts and Crafts Movement by commercializing it, while his defenders believed he brought beauty into the lives of ordinary people. Another example of the commercialization of the Arts and Crafts Movement can be seen in the Craftsman Magazine published by Gustav Stickley. Lucien Pissaro, a French artist and wood engraver has moved to England because of the Arts and Crafts Movement... Because that movement elevated the art of the woodcut illustration. He, and his wife Ester, both were captivated by the Kelmscott work and established a private press called Eragny Press in 1894.

7 The books combined all the traditional sensibilities of the private press movement but also displayed a growing interest in the blossoming art nouveau trend While the most activity of the Arts and Crafts Movement was centered around Morris and England, it did have the long-range effect of significant upgrading of book design and typography worldwide. For a lithographer, De Roos, from the Netherlands, reviving Dutch typography and book design became a lifelong passion. One of his exceptional designs was Dante Gabriel Rossetti s Hand Soul in He designed the layout, the typeface (which he named Meidoorn) and the initial letters. Another designer, Jan van Krimpen, became the preeminent book designer of his generation in the Netherlands. In 1926 he designed and illustrated Her Zattehart (The Drunken Heart) as well as designing the typeface used for it (called Lutetia). For Van Kilmpen, typography existed only for the book, and all of his typefaces were designed for that purpose. He viewed advertising and the people connected with it with complete contempt. Charles Nypels was an apprentice to DeRoos and took a fresh approach as evidenced by his text and title pages, his use of color, and his initial letters. Don quichotte shows Nypels at his elegant best. In Amsterdam, in 1923, Sander Stols was committed to high quality at the family publishing company. Stols doctrine was simplicity and maximum legibility. Like Van Krimpen, Stols believed the designers role was clear and to the point: Providing the form in which a book will be printed -- the designer must never-the-less satisfy a number of requirements for the book, knowledge of its history and technology, artistry and taste, and insight as to production costs. In short, all those factors which make is possible to make a written text into a printed book that satisfy the greater demands of legibility.

8 In Germany, the most important type designer of the Arts and Crafts movement was Rudolf Koch -- a deeply mystical and medieval in his viewpoints. He regarded the alphabet as a supreme spiritual achievement of humanity. Koch sought the medieval experience through the design and lettering of hand made manuscript books. After WWI Koch turned to handmade broadsides and became closely associated with the Kingspor Type Foundry. His type designs ranged from original interpretations of medieval letter forms... To unexpected new designs, such as the rough-hewn chunky letter forms of the Neuland face. In America, the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement was never more evident than personified in two men from the midwest: Book Designer Bruce Rogers... And type designer Fredric Goudy. Both were passionate admirers of the Kelmscott Press. Early on in his life, Goudy started, and failed twice, to start his own private press company. When he was unemployed he designed his first typeface, Camelot, and mailed drawings of it to the Dickson Type Foundry in Boston with an offer to sell the design for five dollars. In a couple of weeks, a check for $10 arrived. That started Goudy s career as a freelance type designer in Chicago. His third printing venture was the Venture Press that he first moved to Boston, and then to New York. But a terrible fire completely destroyed everything in 1908 which marked the end of Goudy s efforts as a printer. After that he turned his energy to the design, cutting, and casting of typefaces.

9 Goudy designed a total of 122 typefaces in the course of his life. Albert Bruce Rogers was from Lafayette, Indiana and ended up becoming the most important book designer of the early 20th century. An artist, an illustrator, and a landscape painter, after seeing a Kelmscott publication his interest shifted totally towards book design. J.M. Bowles, a close friend and the one that showed him the Kelmscott piece, was editing a small magazine called Modern Art. Louis Prang became interested in it, bought it, and then invited Bowles to move to Boston and edit the publication. Once Bowles was there, he realized that they needed a typographic designer, so he hired Rogers to fulfill that role for.50 an hour. Rogers then joined Riverside Press where he applied the ideal of the beautifully designed book to commercial production. Rogers left Riverside in 1912 and then just continued as a freelancer. One of Rogers most elegant designs was done in 1915: The Centaur. Rogers possessed an outstanding sense of visual proportion. Design is a decision making process -- subtle choices about paper, type, margins, reading, etc. can combine to create either a unity or a disaster. Rogers was a classicist who revived the fonts of the past but he did so with a sense of what was appropriate. Like Goudy, he lived a long life and was recognized and honored for his achievements. Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the private presses inspired a vigorous revitalization of typography. The passion for Victorian typefaces started to decline in the 1890s, as imitations of Kelmscott typefaces were followed by revivals of other classical typeface designs.