#vale press

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

This week we present some type and wood-engraved initials from an edition of Alfred Lord Tennyson's Lyric Poems by the Vale Press, printed in London at the Ballantyne Press in an edition of 320 copies in 1900. British artist, illustrator, printer, and book and type designer Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) founded the Vale Press in 1896 and designed three typefaces for the press. The most commonly used typeface was Vale Type, which is used here. Ricketts also used over 100 ornamental initials which he designed and engraved, several of which are shown here. To make the initials, Ricketts would draw the designs in ink, and then would paste a number of designs onto a single sheet. These were then photographed onto a woodblock, engraved by Ricketts, and finally separated when they were electrotyped.

The Art Nouveau-style border design in the first image was designed by Ricketts and engraved in wood by Charles Edward Keats, who began working for Ricketts in 1899. As Ricketts did not own the requisite printing equipment for his enterprise, he established a relationship with the venerable Edinburgh-founded Ballantyne Press, and this edition was printed by Charles John Holmes, who worked for Ballantyne and became the manager for Vale.

This copy of Lyric Poems is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts with work by Charles Ricketts and the Vale Press.

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Charles Ricketts’ page decorations for books published by the Vale Press: The Race of Leaves by Michael Field (1901), The Rowley Poems of Thomas Chatterton edited by R. Steele (1898), The Poems of Sir John Suckling edited by John Gray (1896).

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woodcut illustration by Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts for Vale Press edition of Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman, 1894

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present selected pages from Charles Ricketts’s Vale Press edition of Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia and Muses Elizium printed in London at the Ballantyne Press in 1896. Nymphidia was first published in 1627 and The Muses' Elizium, Drayton’s final publication, in 1630. These texts are edited here by Rickett’s friend and collaborator John Gray. The text was printed in Vale type, designed by Ricketts in 1895 using Nicolas Jenson types as his models, and cut by the punchcutter Edward Philip Prince, who had cut the Kelmscott typefaces. The paper was specially hand-made with the Vale Press watermark by English papermaker Joseph Arnold at his Eynsford Paper Mill in Dartford, Kent. Not having a press of his own, Ricketts contracted work with the London branch of the venerable Ballantyne Press, closely supervised by Ricketts himself, where Vale Press work was handprinted on an Albion iron hand press.

The border design used on the first page of text shown here originally appeared in another Vale Press publication earlier in the year, but the frontispiece depicting Oberon and Puck on a background of honeysuckle leaves and flowers was designed and cut by Ricketts to face it in this publication. Ricketts also designed and cut all the initial letters. Ricketts’s drawings for the initials were photographed onto a wood block, engraved by Ricketts, and then turned into electroplates. Ricketts also designed 12 patterned papers for use on bindings. The individual motifs for these papers were first engraved in wood, then printed in repeating patterns, which was then cast as electrotypes. The design for the paper used on this edition, printed in green ink, is called “nut and mouse.” The edition was sold by Hacon & Ricketts (William Llewellyn Hacon was Ricketts’s business partner).

View our other posts on the Vale Press.

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[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present pages from Charles Ricketts’s 1901 Vale Press production of De Cupidinis et Psyches Amoribus Fabula Anilis, printed in London at the Ballantyne Press in an edition of 310 copies. This tall, thin book includes five original wood engravings and one wood-engraved border design by Charles Ricketts. The Latin text was carefully reviewed by Vale Press manager Charles John Holmes and printed in a Venetian-style type called Vale, designed by Ricketts and produced in 1895, on unbleached, handmade paper by Joseph Arnold bearing the Vale Press watermark.

In his diary Ricketts states that the illustrations were “all old designs save the last one,” and he worked on engraving them throughout February 1901. The printing of the book was completed in September of that year, and special collections librarian Maureen Watry claims in her 2004 book on the Vale Press that “Undoubtedly, one of Rickett’s motivations for printing a Latin text was the opportunity to display the Vale fount to its best advantage. . . . The presence of fewer tailed letters gives the printed page a greater evenness of effect, especially in the large format that Ricketts chose for this text.”

The edition was sold by Hacon & Ricketts (William Llewellyn Hacon was Ricketts’s business partner) and John Lane, The Bodley Head. Our copy, which was withdrawn from UC-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, is another donation from our good friend Jerry Buff.

View our other posts on the Vale Press.

View more Fine Press Friday posts. 

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Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe, illustrations by Charles Ricketts, published by the Vale Press, 1894.

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Covers and patterned papers of books published by Ricketts and Shannon’s Vale Press: ‘Bird, arrow, and rose’ patterned paper for Fair Rosamund by Michael Field (1897), cover of The poems of Sir John Suckling (1896), cover of Nymphidia and the Muses Elizium by Michael Drayton (1896), patterned paper for The Rowley poems of Thomas Chatterton (1898) (vol. 2).

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A gorgeous copy, in pristine condition, of "Hero and Leander", the first book from the Vale Press (1894). One of 220 copies. Illustrated with woodcuts, initials and borders by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon.