Printing from moveable types began at Mainz in 1450 with the Latin Bible of Johann Gutenberg. This book is strikingly beautiful, as anyone who has handled a copy can attest. The ink, a special compound of lead, sulfer and copper, has a rich glossy blackness. The paper stock used was of high quality. The book was composed and printed in sections, utilizing a simple form of mass production. It is a technical and aesthetic accomplishment to an extent surprising in a new art. Indeed, it is interesting to note how little the technique of printing changed in the five centuries between Gutenberg and the introduction of phototype technology in the 1950's.
The earliest printed books were remarkable not only as a technological advance in the propagation of text (or rather, as a creative recycling of existing technologies), but were also exceptional for clarity of typographic design, harmony of text and illustration, and beauty of proportion. This was not an accidental accomplishment--the basic tenets of sound book design had been established over the previous thousand years of manuscript production, and are as applicable today as they were in the fifteenth century.
It is important to understand the historical basis of book design. Certain practices came about through trial and error, not through scientific studies of legibility and design, but they serve the same purpose. The object of the printer or scribe is to make the reader's job as easy as possible. For example, certain proportions of text block to margin depths are inherently more appealing (or less distracting) to the eye of the reader, and enhance legibility. The art of text placement is referred to as mis-en-page. There are relationships between the character size of a given face or script to line length, and to the spacing between lines (what is known in typographic terminology as leading).None of these practices are inviolable rules, but they are part of what we see when we look at a book and say "This is well-printed." "This is easily read." Or, "This is beautiful."
By the early Renaissance, in the years preceding printing, codices of extraordinary cost and beauty were produced under the patronage of the European aristocracy and theocracy. These manuscripts were of exceptionally high cost, involving hundreds or thousands of hours of work by highly skilled artisans--scribes, illuminators, binders and the rest. The expense of book production in this manner was far more than anything the rising urban merchant class could afford. The most a thriving bourgeois could be expected to own, in this pre-printing era, would be a small book of hours, with perhaps a single miniature of devotional theme.
The invention of printing changed all that, of course. While the earliest printed books were quite expensive (though still cheaper than the manuscripts which they frequently emulated), within fifty years the cost of a book had fallen to the point where most of the literate population of Europe could afford to own books--not a single volume, but a number of volumes, a personal library. In Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Nuremberg, a thriving book trade existed. There was an explosion of printed material, secular and religious, Latin and vernacular, highbrow and lowbrow, that dramatically changed society --his, finally, was the greatest accomplishment of the humanist revolution.
For the first time in modern history there was a book-buying public, a burgeoning and newly-literate one, and a printing, publishing and bookselling trade to supply it. But whilst there was an eager audience, there was also tremendous commercial pressure to bring out titles at the lowest possible cost. There were linen shortages, and resulting paper shortages. Printers shamelessly copied the typefaces of competitors. The result was a gradual and proportionate decrease in the quality of paper, printing and typographic skill. There were, of course, noteworthy and noble exceptions to this statement--the Aldine and Estienne dynasties, Claude Garamond, de Colines, Vascosan--these, and many others, produced books superior in form and content. For all that, I believe it fair to argue that, as the sixteenth century book trade thrived, the necessary commercial compromises caused a reduction in quality, and that, as a general rule, there is an inherent tension between commercialism and quality in the world of the printed book.
I hope that this historical digression helps to illustrate certain issues that are significant to an understanding of fine printing. Let me develop and elaborate several theses. Firstly, fine printing tends to adhere to certain established canons of taste, or at least to be aware of them. This last clause deserves scrutiny. Much nineteenth and twentieth century fine printing is historically allusive or retrospective, but there have been innovations, as there have been at any point in the history of the book. If what we recognize as good design is canonical, that canon is not necessarily fixed. For example, the influential book designer Jan Tschichold formalized a theory of asymmetry in page design in the 1920's, which, while rooted more in the Italian Futurist movement and the Bauhaus then in historical models has been enormously influential. If one examines Tschichold's writings, it becomes abundantly evident that he had an extraordinary grasp of the history of calligraphy and typography, but that he consciously strove to enlarge the tradition of book design. He did nothing ignorantly or unknowingly; his radical realignments of the page were the product of a deep understanding of the principles of sound typography and design.
Secondly, fine printing demands exactitude and knowledge, as well as hand-craftsmanship (though this last is far from an essential). It comes from an aristocratic tradition of book-making. Where time and cost are a concern, there are compromises made, and the art of fine printing does not thrive on compromise. The words "commercial" and "fine printing" are not by any means self-exclusive, but in practice very few publishers and printers have succeeded in marrying the two.
Thirdly, and this gets to the very root of the issue, the quality of the book directly effects the experience of the reader. The book exists in part as a vessel for the text, and much fine printing works by heightening and controlling the reader's experience of that text. For example, the books of William Morris at the Kelmscott Press are frequently criticized for their elaborate ornamentation and their archaic typefaces. Yet the texts they contain are archaic themselves, and Morris's treatment of them heightens the reader's sense of the curious. One cannot read Kelmscott books quickly, gulping at the text, but these were not texts meant to be devoured at a sitting. In effect, Morris's treatment, decorative and somewhat deferential (and very un-modern), moderates the experience of the viewer. Beatrice Warde proposed the Crystal Goblet analogy of typography, that the design and execution of a book should create a clear vessel for the text, but, powerful as this analogy is, it is not the only paradigm available.
Before I go further, let me clarify one point. There is a certain confusion between the terms "fine printing"and "private press." As I have explained, the pursuit of typographic perfection is demanding and ultimately expensive. Historically, few commercial publishers have attempted to excel typographically, largely because it has been uneconomic to do so. There have been numerous exceptions to mediocrity--Bodoni, Baskerville, Didot and Ibarra all come to mind as enlightened printer-publishers. Still, typographical excellence has generally been the province of the gifted (and often wealthy) amateur.
The amateur is not, generally speaking, looking to make profit on their endeavor (a good thing, because very few private presses have ever turned a profit). The object is to conduct the art of printing and typography as well as is in their power. I have indicated that not all fine printing results from private presses, and the converse is equally true--not every private press produces fine printing. Far from it, but it is the case that most of the greatest modern producers of fine printing were privately owned, non-commercial presses that are best grouped under the heading "private press." The topic of what is, and what is not, a private press is a complex and vexing one, and I would refer anyone interested to Will Ransom's essay in Private Presses and Their Books, or his collection of private press credos. Suffice it to say that most of the presses that I will discuss were privately established.
Speaking of private presses, John Hill Burton wrote amusingly of the motivations of the private press proprietor. His comments wryly summarize the satisfactions of press ownership. "The possession of a private printing press is, no doubt, a very appalling type of bibliomania. Much has been told us of the awful scale on which drunkards consume their favored poison, one is not accustomed to hear of their setting up private stills for their own individual consumption. There is a Sardanapalitan excess in this bibliographical luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other vulgar mortals in the common harvest of the public press, but must itself minister to its own tastes and demands. The owner of such an establishment is subject to no extraneous caprices about the breadth of margins, size of type, quarto or folio, leaded or unleaded lines: he dictates his own terms; he is master of the situation, as the French say, and is the true autocrat of literature."
Before the publication of printers' manuals (Moxon, 1693 was the earliest English manual; in Germany, the Ernesti manual of 1721 is probably the earliest), the craft of printing was limited strictly to the guilds whose prerogative it was. This militated against the establishment of private presses; while there was some fine seventeenth century work, it was generally done for commercial publishers. The only way that an individual could have complete control of a publication was to hire a printer to set up shop, and to act as patron and publisher. This is, for example, how the astronomer Tycho Brahe produced many of his works, to the extent of making his own paper when supplies proved difficult. This model, the patron-publisher and his printer, has been a remarkably prevalent one. Most of the significant 18th and 19th century presses are in this mould. The Strawberry Hill Press of Horace Walpole, the Auchinleck Press of Alexander Boswell, the Lee Priory and Middle Hill presses, all of these made use of hired printers. Since the proprietors were not themselves printers, and were amateur judges of printing, the books produced are variable in quality of typography, though frequently of textual interest.
The first English private press of any lasting importance with a proprietor-printer, as opposed to a hired hand was that of William Blake. Blake found that commercially his most powerful visions were a dismal failure. His remarkable visionary interpretations of Young's popular Night Thoughts did not sell well. In addition, as a painter, a poet and an engraver he needed a medium through which he could reach a small circle of kindred souls. To this end, he published his illuminated books. Technically and artistically, these are a triumph, and are the exemplar for the English artist book.
The middle years of the nineteenth century were a fertile time, as new technologies for illustration and typography began to be incorporated into bookmaking, but they were comparatively arid from a standpoint of fine printing. William Pickering, very much a commercial publisher (and hugely successful, until, at the end of his life he backed a loan to a friend, whose incapacity to pay forced Pickering into bankruptcy) produced typographically splendid books, but he was the exceptional case on the trade front. The so-called parlour press flourished at this time, since small printing presses such as Holtzapffel's were widely available commercially, and whilst the output of these presses is fascinating to study and collect, there is little of literary or typographical quality. Gaetano Polidori's eponymous press of the 1840's is of greater note than most, as he was a retired professional printer, but his books are less significant typographically than for the fact that he published the earliest works of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, who were his grandchildren.
The modern private press movement really begins in 1874, when Dr. Charles Daniel, a fellow of Worcester College in Oxford returned from his childhood home in Frome with a miniature Albion Press with which he had worked as a child. In Oxford, he chanced on the cases of the great type cut for Dean John Fell at the Clarendon Press. He began to print with this splendid face in 1877. By 1880, Walter Pater was praising him in inordinate terms "it is, I suppose, the most exquisite specimen of printing that I have ever seen." The press continued until 1903. It is largely because of the Daniel's efforts that the Oxford University Press began again to use the Fell types, which lead to a real revival in the standards of typography at that august institution.
In 1891 William Morris established the Kelmscott Press from his home by the Thames at Kelmscott Manor. Morris was already recognised for his textile and wallpaper designs. He was a staunch Socialist, and was strongly influenced by Ruskin's doctrines on the dignity of work. In the early printed books he collected he saw a nobility that he felt lacking in modern equivalents. He designed his own proprietary typeface (the first of three that the press was to use), called the Golden letter, based on the fifteenth century faces of Jenson (especially his Pliny of 1476). The first product of the press was his own The Story of the Glittering Plain, the first of 53 books from his imprint. Although he died in 1896, the press continued with projects he had set in motion until 1898, under the stewardship of Sir Sidney Cockerell. The magnum opus of the press was the great Chaucer, illustrated with designs by Burne- Jones, with whom Morris had gone to Cambridge, and with whom he had been closely associated throughout his career. I find it an amusing footnote, given Morris's Socialism (despite his espousal of that philosophy, Morris was extremely wealthy) that the Kelmscott Press was that rare creature, a profitable private press.
Morris's success gave birth to a host of presses in England, Europe and the United States. Fin-de-Siècle aestheticism was a rich and fertile medium for the private press movement. Lucien and Esther Pissarro's Eragny Press, Rickett's Vale Press, Ashbee's Essex House Press, even Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Press, all have their origins in the interest engendered by Morris's experiment.
The Doves press was in direct reaction to Morris's strongly decorative approach to bookmaking. Cobden-Sanderson, with Emery Walker the proprietor of the press, was a difficult, demanding and highly idealistic man. He was a great bookbinder, and designer of bookbindings who had bound for Morris. For all the superb ornamentation of his bindings, he chose an austere approach in his printing. The typeface he designed (cut by Edward Prince, who was responsible for the realization of so many of the private press faces) was also based on the Jenson Pliny, but it was as if he had looked at an entirely different book from Morris. Where Morris's face was rather heavy, with comparatively short ascenders and descenders crowned with strong serifs, Cobden-Sanderson's version was much lighter in feel. All his books were printed in the same size of this letter. As Colin Franklin says "This was of course a sign of great strength and assurance, a tour de force." The punches and matrices of this typeface ended up at the bottom of the Thames, for Cobden-Sanderson could not bear the thought of anyone else using them, even his partner.
The Ashendene Press is the last chronologically of the great triumvirate of presses; Kelmscott, Doves, Ashendene. St. John Hornby's private press carried forward the idealism of the English private press movement into the twentieth century. The first Ashendene book was printed in 1895; the last left the press in 1935. The life of the press spanned forty years, from Victorian England to the begiining of the modern era. It is tempting to see Mr. Hornby in the role of the last English gentleman; his correspondence reveals a courteous but extremely businesslike mind, as befitted a director of W. H. Smith's, the great firm of stationers. The Ashendene books show more stylistic range then most presses. They range from the jewel-like vellum copies of the Song of Solomon to the magisterial folio Boccacio, Malory, Thucydides and Spenser.
The private press movement in England did not end with the passing of the century. After the Great War was over and done, a new generation of private presses came to be. The Golden Cockerel, the Nonesuch, the Shakespeare Head, the Gregynog, capably continued the tradition. In Europe, De Zilverdistel, the Cranach, the Bremer, the Officina Bodoni and the Ernst Ludwig presses produced magnificent work. The tradition continues then, and continues today, and probably will continue for as long as there are readers and lovers of books who understand that the printed book is more than the text it contains.