Project Gutenberg's The Art and Craft of Printing, by William Morris

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Title: The Art and Craft of Printing

Author: William Morris

Release Date: March 10, 2010 [EBook #31596]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ART AND CRAFT OF PRINTING, BY WILLIAM MORRIS.

A NOTE BY WILLIAM MORRIS ON HIS AIMS IN FOUNDING THE KELMSCOTT PRESS,
TOGETHER WITH A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESS BY S. C. COCKERELL, AND
AN ANNOTATED LIST OF THE BOOKS PRINTED THEREAT.

Copyright, 1902 By H. M. O'Kane

[Illustration: PSYCHE BORNE OFF BY ZEPHYRUS, DRAWN BY EDWARD BURNE-JONES
& ENGRAVED BY WILLIAM MORRIS]

[Illustration: NOTE BY WILLIAM MORRIS ON HIS AIMS IN FOUNDING THE
KELMSCOTT PRESS]

I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have
a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy
to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the
reader by eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a
great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, & of the earlier
printing which took its place. As to the fifteenth-century books, I had
noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography,
even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly
supplied. And it was the essence of my undertaking to produce books
which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and
arrangement of type. Looking at my adventure from this point of view
then, I found I had to consider chiefly the following things: the paper,
the form of the type, the relative spacing of the letters, the words,
and the lines; and lastly the position of the printed matter on the
page. It was a matter of course that I should consider it necessary that
the paper should be hand-made, both for the sake of durability and
appearance. It would be a very false economy to stint in the quality of
th