THE ART OF
THE BOOK

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CHARLES HOLME, EDITOR

MCMXIV
“THE STUDIO” LTD.
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK

PREFATORY NOTE

THE Editor desires to express his thanks to the following who have kindly assisted in the preparation of this volume:—to the Trustees of the Kelmscott Press for permission to reproduce the pages printed in the three types designed by William Morris, and to Mr. Emery Walker for the valuable assistance he has rendered in the reproductions of these particular pages, and also the page of Proctor's Greek type; to Mr. Lucien Pissarro for allowing the three pages by the Eragny Press to appear; to Mr. C. H. St. John Hornby, whose page by the Ashendene Press has been especially set up for this volume; to Mr. Philip Lee Warner for permission to show two pages by the Riccardi Press; to Messrs. Chatto & Windus for the page by the Florence Press; to Messrs. Methuen & Co. for the page printed in the “Ewell” type; to Messrs. H. W. Caslon & Co. for the page of their new “Kennerley” type; to Messrs. P. M. Shanks & Sons for the page of “Dolphin Old Style” type; to Mr. F. V. Burridge for the two pages especially set up at the London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts; to Messrs. George Allen & Co. for permission to reproduce the two pages designed by Mr. Walter Crane; to Mr. Percy J. Smith for the book-opening designed by him; to the Cuala Press, the Vincent Press, the Reigate Press, Messrs. B. T. Batsford, Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons, Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, Messrs. Siegle, Hill & Co., for permission to show various pages from their publications; and to Mr. J. Walter West, R. W. S., for the pages designed by him.

The Editor's thanks are due to the various bookbinders whose work has been lent for illustration, and to Monsieur Emile Lévy for the loan of the photographs of Mr. Douglas Cokerell's bindings; to Mr. John Lane for permission to illustrate the cover designs by Aubrey Beardsley; and to Messrs. George Newnes for the end-paper design by Mr. Granville Fell.

The Editor is also indebted to the various Continental and American publishers, printers, type-founders, bookbinders and book-decorators who have kindly placed at his disposal the examples of their work shown in the foreign sections; particularly to Herren Gebrüder Klingspor, the Bauersche Giesserei, Herr Emil Gursch, Herr D. Stempel, Herren Genzsch and Heyse, MM. G. Peignot et fils, Monsieur L. Pichon, and Monsieur Jules Meynial for the pages of type especially set up for this volume.

LIST OF ARTICLES

GREAT BRITAIN

BRITISH TYPES FOR PRINTING BOOKS. BY BERNARD H. NEWDIGATE

TO judge rightly of the good or bad features of types used for printing books, we should have some acquaintance at least with the earlier forms from which our modern types have come. Let us therefore glance at the history of the letter from which English books are printed to-day.

The earliest printed books, such as the Mainz Bible and Psalters, were printed in Gothic letter, which in its general character copied the book-hands used by the scribes in Germany, where these books were printed. In Italy, on the other hand, the Gothic hand did not satisfy the fastidious taste of the scholars of the Renaissance, who had adopted for their own a handwriting of which the majuscule letters were inspired, or at least influenced, by the letter used in classical Rome, of which so many admirable examples had survived in the old monumental inscriptions. For the small letters they went back to the fine hand which by the eleventh and twelfth centuries had gradually been formed out of the Caroline minuscules of the ninth and had become the standard book-hand of the greater part of Latin Europe. When the Germans Sweynheim and Pannartz brought printing into Italy, they first printed books in a very beautiful but somewhat heavy Roman letter of strong Gothic tendency. It seems, indeed, to have been somewhat too Gothic for the refined humanistic taste of that day; and when they moved their press to Rome, it was discarded in favour of a letter more like the fashionable scrittura umanistica of the Renaissance. Other Italian printers had founts both of Gothic and of Roman types. The great Venetian printer Jenson, for instance, and many of his fellows printed books in both characters; but the Roman gradually prevailed, first in Italy, then in Spain and France, and later on in England. In Germany, on the other hand, the cradleland of the craft, Gothic letter of a sadly debased type has held its own down to this day. Even in Germany, however, the use of Roman type has gained ground of late years, nationalist feeling notwithstanding.

The Roman type used by the early Italian printers is, then, the prototype from which all other Roman founts are descended. Its development may be traced through such Roman type as