Kelmscott Press

A Kelmscott book begins to make its argument before the first sentence is read. The weight of a letter, the interval between words, the width of a margin and the resistance of paper all belong to its design. William Morris founded the Kelmscott Press to bring those decisions together. His account of the undertaking starts with an ambition for books that were beautiful and easy to read; even an undecorated page, he believed, should give pleasure through typography alone. The familiar borders of curling foliage grew around that more fundamental concern. ^[1]

The Press began printing in Hammersmith in 1891 and continued until 1898, beyond Morris’s death in October 1896. Its books draw on medieval manuscripts and early printing, but their making involved an extensive contemporary network: a photographer and printing adviser, a punch cutter, papermakers, compositors, pressmen, illustrators, engravers and binders. The term “private press” describes an enterprise able to pursue particular artistic priorities; it should not suggest that Kelmscott was an amateur operation without skilled professional labour. ^{[1] [2]}

The University of Maryland’s catalogue lists fifty-three Kelmscott works, extending from medieval translations to modern poetry and Morris’s own romances. The celebrated Kelmscott Chaucer belongs within this larger experiment. Following the workshop’s methods and its less familiar books reveals how many different solutions could emerge from a remarkably consistent view of what a printed book should be. ^[3]

A long ambition takes a London address

Morris’s interest in making books preceded the Press by decades. Sydney Cockerell’s history, published with Morris’s own account, describes a projected illustrated Earthly Paradise in the 1860s. Burne-Jones supplied drawings and Morris himself engraved many of the blocks, alongside other members of their circle. Trial pages were prepared, but the ambitious folio never appeared. Another proposed illustrated edition, of Love Is Enough, also stopped short of publication. These projects brought writing, illustration, ornament and printing into the same conversation long before there was a Kelmscott workshop. ^[1]

The immediate preparation came through Morris’s friendship with Emery Walker, a neighbour with practical knowledge of printing and photographic reproduction. Cockerell describes their frequent discussions from about 1888 and Walker’s advice on the typography of The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains, both printed at the Chiswick Press. Particular attention went to type, the absence of unnecessary spacing between lines, and the proportions of the page. These books allowed Morris to test improvements through an existing printer before taking responsibility for a press himself. Their literary development belongs to the wider history of Morris’s writing. ^[1]

Walker declined Morris’s invitation to become a business partner in December 1889, yet remained an essential adviser. Cockerell’s description of him as virtually a partner concerns that sustained practical and artistic contribution, rather than a financial partnership. Photographic enlargements of fifteenth-century printing helped Morris study individual letters closely. During 1890 he developed his first type, with the punch cutter Edward Prince turning the drawings into the tools needed to manufacture it. By the end of that year the fount was almost complete. Preparation in 1890 and printing in 1891 therefore mark different stages of the undertaking. ^[1]

The original Kelmscott account records the taking of a cottage at 16 Upper Mall on 12 January 1891. William Bowden, a retired master printer, had already been engaged. A trial page was printed on 31 January; his son W. H. Bowden joined him as compositor in February, and Cockerell places the first book sheet around 2 March, with some uncertainty. The pressman Giles joined the small staff during the first book’s production. The Bowdens’ setting and presswork made Morris’s new type into the pages of a book. ^[4]

This was a London press, close to Morris’s home, Kelmscott House. It was separate from Kelmscott Manor, his country retreat in Oxfordshire. The Manor supplied the name that he also gave to his Hammersmith house and the Press; it did not supply the workshop’s location. The distinction becomes particularly vivid in News from Nowhere, whose Kelmscott frontispiece depicts the country house within a book manufactured at Upper Mall. ^{[2] [5]}

Three types, developed through use

Morris began with a roman type, later named Golden after The Golden Legend, the book originally intended to inaugurate the Press. He looked particularly to the Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson. In his Note on His Aims, Morris explains that he enlarged and repeatedly drew early letters before designing his own. He wanted substantial, clearly formed characters, with less contrast between thick and thin strokes than he found in contemporary printing. His objective was to learn from the older type’s construction and then make a new alphabet. He explicitly acknowledged differences between his letters and Jenson’s. ^[1]

Prince’s contribution was indispensable. Drawing a letter and cutting its punch are distinct acts: the punch cutter had to preserve its form at the small size required for printing. Cockerell records that an early letter cut at the size called Great Primer was considered too large for the roman fount, and the smaller size called English was chosen. Such names are historical type sizes. They help explain why the finished letter was a practical manufacturing decision as well as a drawn shape. ^[1]

The second fount, Troy, developed in 1891. Its Gothic character drew on early German printing, including the work of Peter Schoeffer, Günther Zainer and Anton Koberger. Morris wished to make blackletter readable by avoiding excessive compression and sharp projections, and by restricting contractions and joined letters. The trial pages described by Cockerell show experimentation continuing after a general style had been chosen: one early capital was promptly discarded. The complete stock of Troy type was sent from the foundry on the last day of 1891. ^{[1] [4]}

The smaller Chaucer type answered another practical problem. Troy was too large for the projected double-columned Chaucer, so Prince cut the related design at pica size between February and May 1892. It was ready in June and appeared in the chapter list and glossary of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye before the Chaucer itself was finished. A type’s name can therefore commemorate a major purpose without identifying its first appearance. Across the Press, the larger and smaller Gothic types could work together, distinguishing main text from headings, glossaries or other supporting material. ^{[1] [4]}

These three Morris-designed types formed the Press’s lasting repertoire, but he continued to consider alternatives. Cockerell records an experimental alphabet based on a book printed at Subiaco, which Morris drew in 1892 and decided against having cut. The abandoned design is useful evidence of selection: the workshop’s coherent appearance emerged through rejected possibilities as well as successful ones. ^[1]

The open book as the unit of design

Type alone did not determine whether a page worked. Morris paid close attention to the gaps within and around it. He wanted the printed face of each letter to occupy its body generously, words separated clearly but narrowly, and intervals kept as even as possible. He objected to the conspicuous channels of white that can run through badly spaced text. His criticism directs attention to something easily overlooked in a handsome book: blank space has a pattern too. ^[1]

He was similarly restrained about inserting metal leads between lines of type. Extra space could serve a particular purpose, but he resisted its automatic use. The compact appearance of a Kelmscott page arose from the relationship between letter size, line spacing and word spacing. It was not achieved by choosing a dark alphabet and leaving everything else to the compositor. The smaller Chaucer type sometimes received a thin lead, with a still finer allowance in the Chaucer and other double-columned books. ^[1]

Margins extended that reasoning to the whole opening. Morris proposed the narrowest margin beside the binding, then progressively wider spaces at the top, outside and bottom. His explanation was that the reader sees a pair of facing pages together. The printed areas should belong to that shared field. This was his design principle, informed by his reading of older books; it need not be turned into a universal law for every historical book or every modern reader. ^[1]

The Pequot Library opening of News from Nowhere makes the relationship tangible. A framed view of Kelmscott Manor occupies the left page above a block of explanatory lettering. On the right, the title and red chapter heading lead into text with a large decorated initial. Curling leaves and fruit surround this reading area, while the two unequal compositions face one another across the gutter. The picture and the first chapter each have their own task, yet the opening has been given a common visual weight. ^[6]

Morris’s demand that decoration belong to the page of type is especially important here. A border can establish the edge of the reading area, an initial can mark the beginning of a passage, and a heading can announce a change of scale or subject. Their usefulness depends on their relationships. The Press’s page design rewards looking at a whole opening before isolating an attractive leaf, letter or picture. ^[1]

Ornament, pictures and the work between them

The ornament evolved during the Press’s short life. Cockerell describes early initials related to fifteenth-century Italian manuscripts, followed by letters with grapes and vine leaves after Morris’s visit to Beauvais in 1891. He also identifies a practical change towards larger foliage and lighter backgrounds, because some early initials looked too dark beside the type. Botanical richness was being adjusted against the density of words. The aim was balance across the printed surface. ^[4]

His inventory records 384 initials, including a few engraved but unused, and thirty-four versions of the letter T. Such variety gave the workshop alternatives at different sizes and in different settings. It also warns against treating every decorated capital as an interchangeable emblem of a single “Morris style”. A letter used beside a short lyric, a long romance or a large illustration had to fit that particular composition. ^{[1] [4]}

The Press also depended on the translation of pictures between media. Cockerell explains that most of Burne-Jones’s designs began in pencil. Robert Catterson-Smith, and in some cases Charles Fairfax Murray, redrew them in ink; the artist revised them, and photography transferred the designs to wood. An engraver then made the printable block. Burne-Jones’s authorship of the image therefore coexisted with skilled work by people whose names are less conspicuous on the title page. ^[1]

Different books drew on different artists and engravers. Walter Crane designed the twenty-three illustrations for the second Kelmscott Glittering Plain, engraved by A. Leverett. Charles March Gere designed the Manor view for News from Nowhere, engraved by W. H. Hooper. Cockerell names Hooper, C. E. Keates and W. Spielmeyer among the principal engravers of the Press’s blocks, with G. F. Campfield responsible for some early initials. Attributing every Kelmscott picture to Burne-Jones, or every block to Hooper, would erase this variety. ^{[1] [5]}

Nor was everything printed directly from engraved wood. Repeated initials and ornaments were printed from electrotypes, metal duplicates of the relief designs, while most title pages and initial words were printed from wood. Gaskin’s illustrations for The Shepheardes Calender and the map in The Sundering Flood were among the images printed from process blocks. These distinctions matter because a commitment to fine hand printing did not entail excluding contemporary reproductive techniques. Photography and metal duplication helped carry carefully drawn designs into repeatable printed forms. ^[1]

The Chaucer opening offers the most elaborate example: broad foliage surrounds a large title opposite a framed illustration, immense initial and small columns of verse. Its full development belongs to the individual edition, but within the Press’s history it demonstrates how shared methods could support an exceptionally demanding commission. ^[7]

Paper, ink and the book in the hand

Morris specified handmade linen paper with a firm, well-sized surface. He preferred laid paper, formed on a wire mould, while wanting the resulting lines to avoid a strongly ribbed appearance. His model was a Bolognese paper of about 1473. J. Batchelor and Son made the paper in Kent. The historical example supplied a desired character; a contemporary specialist supplier had to achieve it for a working nineteenth-century press. Durability and appearance were connected in Morris’s explanation of this choice. ^[1]

The workshop needed several sheet sizes and weights. Its first stock carried a primrose watermark with Morris’s initials. The small sheets were unsuitable for printing The Golden Legend economically, since only two pages could be printed at once, so a larger size was ordered and The Glittering Plain went ahead first. A material constraint changed the order of the catalogue. The name Golden remained attached to the type even though the book that supplied it was published seventh. ^{[1] [3]}

Later projects required further adaptations. The Chaucer used a stouter, slightly larger paper with a perch-and-spray watermark; another paper, marked with an apple, served books including The Earthly Paradise and Sigurd the Volsung. The relationship between sheet and finished book is important: folding a sheet produces different formats, while a large folio imposes demands unlike those of a small octavo or sixteenth-size volume. The paper was part of planning a book’s size, thickness and presswork. ^[1]

Many titles also appeared in a small number of copies printed on vellum, although Cockerell identifies exceptions. A vellum binding does not establish that the pages inside are vellum. University College Oxford’s Maud, for example, is a paper copy bound in limp vellum; its edition comprised 500 copies on paper and five on vellum, the latter not offered for public sale. Distinguishing the material of the leaves from the covering prevents a common confusion when describing a photograph or catalogue entry. ^[2]

The ink and binding also came through specialist trades. After trying black inks from English suppliers, the Press found one from Hanover most satisfactory. Cockerell says Morris discussed making his own ink but never carried out the plan. J. & J. Leighton bound the books in vellum and in the paper-and-cloth form commonly described as half or quarter holland. Silk ties supplied colour and a means of closing many vellum bindings. These relatively plain coverings keep attention on the printed leaves, although the surviving books may also carry bindings commissioned by later owners. ^[1]

A workshop that grew with its books

The first cottage soon became too small. Cockerell records the taking of larger premises at 14 Upper Mall in May 1891, followed by the departure from number 16 in June. A second printing press arrived that November while the long Golden Legend was still in production. Later, number 21 Upper Mall provided additional space; Cockerell particularly valued its riverside light. The expanding sequence of rooms and equipment shows an enterprise responding to work in hand. ^[1]

The workshop used Albion hand presses. Their operation placed physical limits on the size and density of the assembled type and blocks, known as a forme. William S. Peterson’s account of the large Chaucer press draws on Cockerell’s diary and correspondence to explain the difficulty: the pressure needed for the great borders caused repeated trouble with the existing presses. A reinforced machine arrived in December 1894, itself needed repair, and by 8 January 1895 two presses were working on the Chaucer. The episode connects the visual ambition of the page directly to equipment, maintenance and staff. ^[8]

It also gives substance to the phrase “hand printed”. A book depended on people setting type, preparing formes and operating machinery, as well as on Morris’s design decisions. The Bowdens and the early pressman Giles belong to that history. So do the suppliers whose work reached Hammersmith in the form of paper, type, blocks, ink and bindings. Morris directed a production system in which judgement was distributed among trades. His close involvement does not make all those contributions acts of his own hand. ^{[1] [4]}

The Huntington’s surviving business records indicate how much coordination this required. Its guide identifies bills concerning printing equipment, paper and moulds, ink, vellum, wood engraving, binding and type, alongside agreements with dealers and correspondence with Gere. Its ephemera include proofs, developing illustrations, order forms and advertising circulars. These are evidence of the administrative and commercial work surrounding the finished objects. A beautiful opening was the visible result of a chain of orders, payments, corrections and deliveries. ^[9]

Kelmscott’s selective use of technology also qualifies an easy opposition between machinery and craft. The hand press was itself a machine, photographic enlargement helped the design of type, and electrotypes multiplied ornaments. The practical question was how a process affected the quality and character of the result. The wider arguments about labour and production belong to Morris’s politics and the Arts and Crafts movement; the workshop supplies concrete examples through which those arguments can be examined. ^[1]

A catalogue wider than its famous Chaucer

The first book issued by the Press was The Story of the Glittering Plain on 8 May 1891. Its Golden type, single principal border and decorated initials established a repertoire without the later edition’s series of pictures. In 1894 Morris returned to the same story in a larger format, with Troy type and Crane’s illustrations. These are two different editions. Comparing them reveals how format, type and illustration could alter the presentation of the same text, rather than merely adding more ornament to an unchanged object. ^[1]

The Golden Legend, issued in three volumes in November 1892, represents the recovery of earlier printing. It used William Caxton’s translation, edited by F. S. Ellis, and joined a group of Caxton reprints that also included The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, Reynard the Fox, The Order of Chivalry and Godefrey of Boloyne. Editors and textual sources mattered alongside the historic appearance of the page. The Press was producing new editions of readable works, with decisions about the text as well as its physical arrangement. ^[1]

Later writing brought a different range. Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic appeared in 1892 with a preface by Morris. Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson and Coleridge also entered the catalogue. In Maud, completed on 11 August 1893 and published by Macmillan on 30 September, Golden type and black-and-red printing framed Tennyson’s monodrama. The specifically designed borders and woodcut title gave this compact volume its own identity. Its dated colophon records completion, while the later publication date records when it was issued: two events that catalogue summaries can compress into a single year. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

The catalogue extended beyond English and medieval European literature. The Book of Wisdom and Lies presented traditional Georgian stories by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani in Oliver Wardrop’s translation. Sidonia the Sorceress used Lady Wilde’s translation of Wilhelm Meinhold. Morris’s own Beowulf was credited jointly with A. J. Wyatt. These books make translators and editors visible as participants in the Press’s literary choices; a consistent appearance did not mean a single author or a single textual tradition. ^[1]

Morris’s romances and poetry formed another substantial strand. The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at the World’s End, Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair and the new Earthly Paradise brought his own writing into changing formats. Cockerell records that The Well at the World’s End remained in preparation for years while other projects proceeded alongside it. The catalogue is consequently a record of overlapping production, not a tidy queue in which one complete book always followed another. ^[1]

Printing and publishing were also separate responsibilities. Reeves and Turner sold early books, Quaritch published The Golden Legend, and Macmillan published Maud. Cockerell identifies Godefrey of Boloyne, issued in May 1893, as the first book published and sold at the Press itself. An announcement and order form included specimen pages, allowing potential buyers to see something of the proposed book. Across its life the Press issued lists of available and forthcoming works, alongside announcements for individual titles. Commercial communication became another use for its typography. ^[1]

Other small jobs carried the letters and ornament beyond books for collectors. Cockerell lists invitations for Hammersmith Socialist Society gatherings, a leaflet for the Ancoats Brotherhood and scholarship certificates for the London County Council’s Technical Education Board. The certificates used oblong borders designed for Chaucer illustrations, including one that did not appear in the book. A decorative form could move from literary illustration to an educational document while acquiring a different purpose. The Press’s output included this less conspicuous working print as well as bound volumes. ^[1]

A future imagined in an old-looking book

News from Nowhere brings the Press’s visual and literary concerns into unusually close contact. The story first appeared serially in Commonweal between January and October 1890, followed by Reeves and Turner’s book edition in 1891. The William Morris Gallery dates its Kelmscott copy to 1893 and explains that the Press set the text from the earlier book, with corrections. These stages should remain distinct: the Kelmscott volume was a particular material presentation of an already published work. ^[5]

Gere’s frontispiece shows the approach to Kelmscott Manor. In the photographed Pequot opening, a path leads towards the central doorway; gables, windows and planted growth fill the image above Morris’s explanatory lettering. Opposite, the narrative starts with a discussion at the League, its chapter heading printed in red. An identifiable old house and the opening of a modern political romance meet across the fold. The appearance of a historic book accommodates a story concerned with an imagined future. ^{[5] [6]}

The picture’s production is equally revealing. Gere designed it, Hooper engraved it, and Morris supplied the surrounding lettering and narrow ornamental border. The Gallery identifies a later reuse of the house view without that border in Gossip about an Old House on the Upper Thames, printed elsewhere in 1895. The image could travel, but its meaning as a book opening depended on the particular frame and facing text. ^[5]

Its edition of 300 paper copies at two guineas, with ten vellum copies at ten guineas, also exposes a practical tension. Such limited, carefully made books did not offer the same access as newspaper serialisation. Kelmscott preserved and presented writing through a costly form of production; it did not replace every other way of circulating that writing. The Press’s political significance therefore requires attention both to what it printed and to the material conditions under which readers could obtain it. ^[5]

Prices varied across the catalogue. Cockerell lists Gothic Architecture, printed during the 1893 Arts and Crafts Exhibition, at two shillings and sixpence for a paper copy, against the two-guinea paper Maud. The small lecture book was set at Hammersmith and printed at the New Gallery, and was reprinted during the exhibition. This made the practice of printing publicly visible while producing a comparatively less expensive Kelmscott book. One price or format cannot stand for the whole enterprise. ^[1]

Finishing the Press after Morris

Cockerell became secretary in July 1894. After Morris’s death he helped complete the remaining books as an executor, rather than allowing the workshop simply to stop. The posthumous volumes included The Sundering Flood, overseen for the press by May Morris, and Sigurd the Volsung. They belong to the actual Kelmscott production history, even though Morris did not live to see them issued. The closure date is 1898; accounts ending the Press in 1896 or 1897 leave that work out. The Fitzwilliam Museum recounts Cockerell’s decision against taking over the Press with Walker: he doubted whether its standards could be maintained. Completion of the existing work offered a deliberate ending. ^{[1] [10] [11]}

The last two issued books were Love Is Enough and A Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press, both released on 24 March 1898. Love Is Enough carries a December 1897 printing date. Morris’s own Note had been written on 11 November 1895; the final book joined it to Cockerell’s history and annotated list. Composition, printing and issue thus span different years. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s account places the winding up of the Press on 31 March 1898. March 1898 securely marks the conclusion of its seven years of production. ^{[1] [11]}

The final Note also returned to the much earlier illustrated Earthly Paradise. Its frontispiece, showing Psyche carried by Zephyrus, used a design by Burne-Jones engraved by Morris for that abandoned project. The William Morris Gallery identifies it as the last book printed at the Press. An early collaboration therefore entered the final volume, connecting an unrealised ambition of the 1860s with the retrospective account of what the workshop had achieved. ^[10]

Some plans remained unfinished. The Gallery records a posthumous attempt to print the story of Cupid and Psyche with the earlier engravings, for which trial pages were pulled in January 1897. After Kelmscott closed, printing was to pass to the Chiswick Press, but Burne-Jones’s death in June 1898 prevented the proposed revision of illustrations and the edition was abandoned. Completing the final Kelmscott books did not mean that every projected illustrated work reached publication. ^[10]

The dispersal of equipment was different from the continuation of the designs. Peterson records the sale of the presses to C. R. Ashbee after closure, excluding the types and ornaments. Cockerell’s history describes measures intended to preserve the Kelmscott series as a distinct body of work: recurring electrotypes were destroyed, while woodblocks were deposited under restrictions and type remained with the trustees. Ownership of a machine did not automatically confer the whole visual apparatus of the Press. ^{[1] [8]}

That distinction matters when considering its successors. Glasgow’s account places the Doves, Eragny, Ashendene and Vale presses within the wider revival of fine printing associated with Kelmscott. They could share the ambition to treat a book as a designed whole without needing to reproduce Morris’s foliage. The large reinforced Chaucer press itself had a further physical history, passing through other printers’ hands and eventually being acquired by Rochester Institute of Technology in 2013. The afterlife of equipment and the influence of a design principle followed different paths. ^{[8] [12]}

Collecting a complete body of work

The customary total of fifty-three Kelmscott works needs a little care. Maryland’s catalogue follows William S. Peterson’s bibliography, with numbered works, a supplementary number such as A20a for Rossetti, and multi-volume publications. Works, editions, volumes and individual copies consequently describe different things. The Golden Legend alone occupies three volumes, while the two versions of The Glittering Plain are separate editions of one literary work. The total should not be understood as fifty-three identical units of production. ^{[1] [3]}

A particularly revealing survival is the complete collection associated with a Morris & Co. oak cabinet at Huis van het boek in The Hague. The museum describes fifty-three editions in sixty-six volumes, retaining original vellum or half-linen bindings, together with two vellum proof sheets for an unpublished project. This is a count of that assembled collection, including the proofs as additional objects. It provides a physical counterpart to a bibliographical list. ^[13]

The cabinet bears the firm’s 449 Oxford Street address. The Dutch national library acquired it in 1954 and placed it on permanent loan to the museum. Books and furniture are joined here through collecting as well as design: the cabinet gathers the variety of formats into a single preserved ensemble. Its original coverings also retain evidence easily lost when books are rebound, separated into leaves or represented only by an especially decorative opening. ^[13]

Other collections preserve different parts of the process. At the Huntington, original books sit within a larger body of proofs, announcements, illustrations and business records; the collection distinguishes complete Chaucer copies from separate leaves and facsimiles. Each offers a different kind of evidence. A loose leaf allows close examination of type and impression, while an intact volume retains sequence, facing pages and binding. The Press’s insistence on the whole book makes those surviving relationships especially valuable. ^[9]