Kelmscott Press colophon. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The Kelmscott Press was a small press founded and run by English poet, artist, and designer William Morris.
About[]
Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in January, 1891, at Hammersmith, London, in order to produce books by traditional methods, using, as far as possible, the printing technology and typographical style of the 15th century. In this he was reflecting the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement, and responding to the mechanisation and mass-production of contemporary book-production methods and to the rise of lithography, particularly those lithographic prints designed to look like woodcuts.
Kelmscott Press typefaces. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
He designed two typefaces based on fifteenth-century models, the Roman "Golden" type (inspired by the type of the early Venetian printer Nicolaus Jenson) and the black letter "Troy" type; a third type, the "Chaucer" was a smaller version of the Troy type. He also designed floriated borders and initials for the books, drawing inspiration from incunabula and their woodcut illustrations.
Selection of paper and ink, and concerns for the overall integration of type and decorations on the page, made the Kelmscott Press the most famous of the private presses of the Arts and Crafts movement, and the main inspiration for what became known as the "Private Press Movement".
It operated until 1898, producing more than 18,000 copies of 53 different works, comprising 69 volumes, and inspired numerous other private presses, notably the Vale Press, Caradoc Press, Ashendene Press and Doves Press.[1]
Books[]
Besides Morris's works, other books issued by the Kelmscott Press included:[1][2][3]
Page of the Canterbury Tales, Kelmscott Press. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
- Raoul Lafevre, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1892)
- William Shakespeare, The Poems (1893)
- William Caxton (trans.), The History of Reynard the Foxe (1893)
- William Caxton (trans.), The Order of Chivalry (1893)
- Guilelmus, Archbishop of Tyrel, The History of Geoffrey of Boloyne (1893)
- Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1893)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sonnets and Lyrical Poems (1893)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ballads and Narrative Poems (1893)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Hand and Soul (1894)
- Wilhelm Meinhold, Sidonia the Sorceress (1894)
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon (1894)
- An American Memorial to Keats (1895)
- Sir Percyvelle of Gales (1895)
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works (called the Kelmscott Chaucer) (1896)
- Sir Ysumbrace (1897)
The Kelmscott Press edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with decorations by Morris and illustrations by Burne-Jones, is sometimes counted among the most beautiful books ever produced. Full-scale facsimiles of the Kelmscott Chaucer were published by the Basilisk Press in 1974 and by the Folio Society in 2002. More modest facsimiles were published by World Publishing in 1964 and Omega Books in 1985.
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Fiell and Fiell (1999), William Morris pp. 160–165.
- ↑ Dreyfus, John, "The Kelmscott Press". In Parry, William Morris (1996) pp. 310–345.
- ↑ "William Morris and the Kelmscott Press". http://www.alfredom.com/art/morris.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-22. See also Peterson.
External links[]
- Morris and the Kelmscott Press at the Victorian Web
- William Morris and the Kelmscott Press at AlfredoM. Graphic Arts Studio
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