#fine press

So first, thank you for this ask. I love talking about this guy, and you gave me an excuse to fact-check all of the absurd things I’ve learned about him over the past year or so and, as a result, learn even more absurd things about him. But oh man, where to start. So those tags were about a guy named Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (often written about as T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, TJCS here for efficiency). He was an absolutely fascinating dude – quit like three or four different career paths before actually becoming a lawyer and just fucking hating it. He was hanging out with his buddy William Morris (yes, THAT William Morris*) lamenting his lack of satisfying work when Morris’s wife Jane (yes THAT Jane Morris**) suggested he try his hand at bookbinding. (Side note (there are going to be so many side notes): TJCS is the one who coined the name “Arts and Crafts” for the decorative arts movement that Morris basically founded, and TJCS was hugely influential in that circle as well.) He started a bookbinding apprenticeship and just kind of blew everyone away. He was crazy good at it much faster than he should have been, and he founded the Doves Bindery (named after the nearby pub, not the bird) with capital from his wife.

(The biggest side note: TJCS was a hard core Wife Guy, and Annie Cobden-Sanderson was insanely cool in her own right. She was a famous suffragette, was arrested and imprisoned for demonstrating in the lobby of parliament, and was an evangelist for vegetarianism. This whole post could be about her, actually. TJCS thought she was so cool that he took her name – he was T. J. Sanderson, she was Annie Cobden, and when they married, they both took the name Cobden-Sanderson. She went to the U.S. in the early 20th century to teach the suffragettes there what she had learned protesting in England, so I feel like she is in part responsible for my right to vote. Love her.)

Okay, but back to TJCS. Our very talented, very egotistical, very tempestuous little dude was Not Satisfied binding whatever books came in the door because he had big feelings about what the Ideal Book should be. To that end, he teamed up with printer and engraver Emery Walker, William Morris’s former partner at the Kelmscott Press (yes, THAT Kelmscott Press***) to found the Doves Press so that he could create the most beautiful books by printing only the most beautiful words. TJCS was the “visionary and fanatic” (his words) and Walker was the technician. TJCS commissioned a new typeface to be used exclusively by the Doves Press. It was based on some of the most beautiful typography ever created – the capitals based on Nicholas Jensen’s 15th century roman that’s still considered one of the standards of perfection in type design (if you’ve ever used Centaur or read a book set in it, that’s kind of the contemporary version of Jensen’s roman). The Doves Press was unexpectedly successful and it along with Kelmscott Press laid the foundation for what would be the fine press movement of the 20th century. The Doves Bindery now only bound Doves Press books, and if you have a local library or museum that has examples in their collection, it’s well worth the trip to go look at these books.

(The opening of Genesis from The Doves Bible, widely regarded as one of the most perfect books ever printed, image from Jonkers Rare Books.)

Of course, “tempestuous” and “egotistical” are not a great recipe for long and healthy partnerships, even when coupled with “very talented,” and TJCS and Walker had a mega falling out. TJCS was a perfectionist the level of which it is hard to overstate. Walker was… not. He was a printer. You printed your pages, and that was that; sometimes there were going to be errors. Also, he liked to make money. The Doves Type was widely regarded as the most beautiful typeface in existence, and there were lots of folks willing to pay to use it in their own printing pursuits like advertising and other commercial work. I’m sure you can imagine how well this went over with TJCS. After what seemed like endless fighting, a mutual friend, Sydney Cockerell****, suggested a compromise: TJCS would get exclusive use of the Doves Type for the rest of his life, but Emery Walker would own it and could do whatever he wanted with it once TJCS died. Walker figured this was the best he was going to get and agreed. TJCS agreed at the time, but as he got older, he got even more tempestuous and obsessive, and this is where the river comes in. Dude grabbed all of the matrices and punches (the stuff you would need to make more of the Doves Type) and literally threw it into the Thames. Fine, now the only Doves Type that exists is what’s in active use by the Doves Press. That was not good enough for our good friend and Weird Little Guy TJCS. No, in addition to throwing the matrices and punches into the river, he ALSO threw every last piece of type in the workshop into the river. This is fucking hilarious because it’s not like a print shop just has a few copies of the alphabet laying around. A working press (even a small one) like the Doves Press had literally more than a ton of type in the workshop. TJCS was so petty and so determined that only HE would ever get to use this type that he made almost TWO HUNDRED trips to Hammersmith Bridge to dump type in the river.

And the story doesn’t even end there! And I’m typing this alone on my couch instead of trying to retell the abridged version over drinks with friends, so guess what? You get the rest of the story too! The Doves Type is still to this day considered one of the most beautiful typefaces ever created, and I get to introduce you to another single-minded, obsessive little guy who REALLY REALLY wanted to create the most accurate digital facsimile possible of the Doves Type. His name is Robert Green, and at first he was just looking at the texts printed by the Doves Press and trying to recreate it from the printed pages themselves. He did a pretty good job. In his quest, read everything he could about TJCS and the Doves Press, including TJCS’s diaries. I’m not sure anyone before Green really took literally TJCS’s declaration that the type had been “dedicated & consecrated” to the river but Green sure did. He even figured out that TJCS’s bridge of choice must have been Hammersmith. And then he started digging around. Almost a hundred years after TJCS donated it to the Thames, Green found a piece of the Doves Type in the mud under Hammersmith Bridge. With help from Port of London Authority divers, more than one hundred and fifty pieces of the Doves Type were recovered, and Green was able to revise his facsimile based on actual specimens.

The absolutely insane consequence of this is that YOU, dear friend, can buy your own license to the Doves Type and use it for whatever unhinged purpose you can dream up. Whether your interests align with TJCS and you also want to create the Ideal Book, or you feel like typesetting your favorite shitpost, one of the most beautiful typefaces ever cut is at your disposal.

Feels a little silly to put the footnotes under the cut given how long this got, but we're running solely on vibes now, so here we go.

Watercolor portrait of Assia Wevill by Leonard Baskin, in preparation for his future edition of Ted Hugues' poems, Capriccio. Poems by Ted Hughes. Engravings by Leonard Baskin. Searsmont, Maine: The Gehenna Press, 1990

The Special Collections Research Center is delighted to announce a new exhibit featuring a selection of private press books and artwork from the collection of Bill Heidrich, a long-time supporter of the University of Michigan Library. The display will open next week in the Hatcher Library Exhibit Room and will be available from January 13 to April 30, 2025.

All are invited to an opening reception at the Hatcher Gallery Event Space on January 23rd at 10am

Read more!

Illustrations from The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq. Bound by A.R. Keller & Co., Inc. "The Royal Edition is limited to five copies of which this is No. 1"--Colophon.

Publication Information: London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1882. Physical Description: 10 v. in 20 : front. (port.), plates; 26 cm. Subject Term: Bookbinding -- Specimens. Donor Information: J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Collection.

If you are still looking for some good bibliophilic presents, we have two winter catalogs out for your perusal.

The first is our annual Winter Catalog, which highlights the most interesting and rare of our stock for this year.

A Book’s Nature

Books that roll, books that scroll, books that stretch! Painted, printed, cut, and more! Books both small and tall!

Our new exhibit opens today, full of beautiful artist books created by Peter and Donna Thomas. The Thomases have been creating “fine press” and artist books for over 40 years, and this exhibit displays a wide range of their works. Their creative work with paper, printing, and binding have made for a beautiful exhibit. We are thrilled that we have the opportunity to share these works with others. Be sure to stop by the 2nd floor of the library to see these beautiful creations. 

We’re currently installing an exhibition on private presses and printing between the wars. This guest post comes to us from our intern, Emma, who’s researching fine press publications in the 1930s.

The 1930s saw a search for stability after the economic and social revolutions of the previous decades ended in disaster. In the literary world, the search for stability manifested in a return to the traditional values of craftsmanship with a surge in the publication of fine books. The content of the books, however, ranged widely. Though agreeing on returning to earlier values, authors did not agree on which values those should be.  

One trend hearkened back to the perceived wealth and riches of earlier times.  Others looked to foreign cultures for lessons. And many authors turned toward the natural world. Thoreau famously lauded nature for its beauty and power. His work Night and Moonlight explained his connection with the Earth, and is accompanied by Florence Wyman Ivins’ illustrations from wood carvings. The book and illustrations together reference a yearning for bygone days of skilled craftsmen and nature. This enchantment with nature and natural resources spread, exemplified by Gertrude Bone’s poems and accompanied wood carvings. The desire to go back to a simpler time resonated with people in the US not just because of nostalgia, but also because of the explanatory power of man’s relationship with nature. Bone’s depictions of landscapes teetering on the edge of darkness and light and Thoreau’s condemnations of the ills of government place society at a crucial moment of returning to nature or turning away from her at their peril. Not only comforting but also prescriptive, many of the carefully crafted books of this time period focused on returning to nature.

These works can only go so far, however, in solving society’s ills. e.e. cummings mocked the very principle of the fine book with his work Anthropos: The Future of Art. In place of a wood carving illustration, he places a black void on every other page while “infrahumans” (or ‘beneath’ humans) engage in a monotonous, circular conversation. As artists and authors attempted to find order in their rapidly changing world, e.e. cummings reminds us of the futility of these efforts, and that we are still ultimately confronted with the unknowable.