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Nothing like a Doves Binding. Here’s our copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays, published by the Doves Press in 1906, our copy being one of 25 printed on vellum, and here you can see the quires separated by vellum gutter guards, a beautiful thing in itself...
It’s always a good day to look at great typography, and the John Wilson Special Collections has some of the best. Here’s a close look at three opening sections in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays published by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson in 1906 by his Doves Press. Our copy is one of 25 printed on vellum and has these exquisite red capitals, gorgeous ligatures (ct, for example), and even wonderful ampersands, semi-colons, and periods...
We find it fascinating that Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922)--the proprietor of the esteemed Doves Press, a fine press known for its beautiful typography, having great clarity and grace (see top, a detail of a leaf on vellum from the Doves Bible)--had such terrifically difficult handwriting to decipher (middle and bottom image), one of several letters by the lawyer-turned-publisher in our special collections...
One of our most beautiful Doves Press titles--and a gift from the late Jack Walsdorf--is this two-volume Men and Women, by Robert Browning published in 1908. Notable about this set is that its Doves Bindery binding, but most spectacular is the unique flourishing by hand throughout each volume after publication by the father of modern calligraphy, Edward Johnston (1872-1944)...
John Milton, (1644), Areopagitica; a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing, to the Parlament of England, Doves Press, Hammersmith, 1907, Edition of 325 (1918 Cambridge University Press edition pdf here) [Tarlton Law Library at The University of Texas School of Law, Austin, TX]
John Milton, (1644), Areopagitica; a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing, to the Parlament of England, Doves Press, Hammersmith, 1907, Edition of 325 (1918 Cambridge University Press edition pdf here) [Tarlton Law Library at The University of Texas School of Law, Austin, TX]
Typography Tuesday: Doves Type
The Doves Press was founded in 1901 by Emery Walker and Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson. Walker, an expert in 16th-century type design, had inspired William Morris to found the Kelmscott Press, and remained a close friend and adviser to Morris until Morris’s death in 1896. Cobden-Sanderson was founder of the Doves Bindery in 1893, and was also very close to Morris and bound much of Kelmscott’s output. Walker and Cobden-Sanderson combined their talents to establish the Doves Press with financing from Cobden-Sanderson‘s socialist and suffragist wife Anne.
Cobden-Sanderson, Walker, and Morris’s former secretary Sydney Cockerell oversaw the design of the proprietary typeface which was based on Nicolas Jenson’s Roman type of the 1470s. This single typeface was used for every edition that came off the press, and ownership of the type was intended to be shared by the two proprietors. Unfortunately, the two had a falling out over the direction of the press, and their partnership was dissolved in 1908. In 1909, they made an agreement that the type could continue to be used by Cobden-Sanderson, and ownership would go to whoever outlived the other. They did not agree, however, on how the type could be used. Walker believed it should be used commercially, to which Cobden-Sanderson was adamantly opposed.
To spite Walker, Cobden-Sanderson dumped all the matrices for the type into the Thames in 1913. The Press finally closed in 1916, and in a further act of spite, Cobden-Sanderson famously (or infamously), over a period of time and in the dead of night, “bequeathed” the entire font of type to the Thames. T.J. Cobden-Sanderson died in 1922, and after his death, Anne Cobden-Sanderson paid a large sum to settle the dispute with Emery Walker.
For almost 100 years the type was thought to be lost forever, until late last year when designer Robert Green, who for years had been working to recreate the type, dredged the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge, the site of the dumping, with the aid of the Port of London Authority. Remarkably, the type had hardly moved in the intervening century, and 150 pieces of the original type were recovered.
As an example of this famous typeface we present our copy of the 1910 Doves Press edition of Robert Browning’s Dramatis Personae (another exquisite donation from our long-time benefactor Jerry Buff). The copy is inscribed by the printer T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, “To Marie Little with the best of wishes from her ever well-wishing friends, T.J. and Annie Cobden-Sanderson May 1912.” The printing was limited to an edition of 250 copies in red and black on handmade paper, and bound in full limp vellum by the Doves Bindery.
View more posts from our Typography Tuesday series.
Une police de caractères redécouverte
Petit court métrage de Tom Beal sur la recherche d’une ancienne police de caractères (la Doves Press) par Robert Green.
BBC News UK Website, 2015
