Of The Decorative Illustration Of Books Old And New Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALTER CRANE.

FROM GRIMM'S "HOUSEHOLD STORIES." (MACMILLAN, 1882.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALTER CRANE.

FRONTISPIECE. "PRINCESS FIORIMONDE" (MACMILLAN, 1880).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALTER CRANE.

"THE SIRENS THREE" OPENING PAGE. (MACMILLAN, 1886.)]

[Sidenote: A DECORATIVE IDEAL.]

This, however, may be as much the tendency of an age as the result of photographic invention, although the influence of the photograph must count as one of the most powerful factors of that tendency. Thought and vision divide the world of art between them--our thoughts follow our vision, our vision is influenced by our thoughts. A book may be the home of both thought and vision. Speaking figuratively, in regard to book decoration, some are content with a rough shanty in the woods, and care only to get as close to nature in her more superficial aspects as they can. Others would surround their house with a garden indeed, but they demand something like an architectural plan. They would look at a frontispiece like a facade; they would take hospitable encouragement from the t.i.tle-page as from a friendly inscription over the porch; they would hang a votive wreath at the dedication, and so pa.s.s on into the hall of welcome, take the author by the hand and be led by him and his artist from room to room, as page after page is turned, fairly decked and adorned with picture, and ornament, and device; and, perhaps, finding it a dwelling after his desire, the guest is content to rest in the ingle nook in the firelight of the spirit of the author or the play of fancy of the artist; and, weaving dreams in the changing lights and shadows, to forget life's rough way and the tempestuous world outside.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV. OF THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF DECORATIVE BOOK ILl.u.s.tRATION AND THE MODERN REVIVAL OF PRINTING AS AN ART.

Since the three Cantor Lectures, which form the substance of the foregoing chapters, were delivered by me at the rooms of the Society of Arts, some six or seven years have elapsed, and they have been remarkable for a p.r.o.nounced revival of activity and interest in the art of the printer and the decorative ill.u.s.trator, the paper-maker, the binder, and all the crafts connected with the production of tasteful and ornate books.

Publishers and printers have shown a desire to return to simpler and earlier standards of taste, and in the choice and arrangement of the type to take a leaf out of the book of some of the early professors of the craft. There has been a pa.s.sion for tall copies and handmade paper; for delicate bindings, and first editions.

There has grown up, too, quite a literature about the making of the book beautiful--whereof the Ex-Libris Series alone is witness. We have, besides, the history of Early Printed Books by Mr. Gordon Duff, of Early Ill.u.s.trated Books by Mr. Pollard. The Book-plate has been looked after by Mr. Egerton Castle, and by a host of eager collectors ever since. Mr.

Pennell is well known as the tutelary genius who takes charge of ill.u.s.trators, and discourses upon them at large, and Mr. Strange bids us, none too soon, to become acquainted with our alphabets. I have not yet heard of any specialist taking up his parable upon "end papers," but, altogether, the book has never perhaps had so much writing outside of it, as it were, before.

[Sidenote: MODERN TYPOGRAPHY.]

A brilliant band of ill.u.s.trators and ornamentists have appeared, too, and nearly every month or so we hear of a new genius in black and white, who is to eclipse all others. For all that, even in the dark ages, between the mid-nineteenth century and the early eighties, one or two printers or publishers of taste have from time to time attempted to restrain the wild excesses of the trade-printer, with his terribly monotonous novelties in founts of type, alternately shouting or whispering, anon in the crushing and aggressive heaviness of block capitals, and now in the attenuated droop of italics. Sad havoc has been played with the decorative dignity of the page, indeed, as well as with the form and breed of roman and gothic letters: one might have imagined that some mischievous printer's devil had thrown the apple of discord among the letters of the alphabet, so ingeniously ugly were so many modern so-called "fancy" types.

We have had good work from the Edinburgh houses, from Messrs. R. and R.

Clark, and Messrs. Constable, and in London from the Chiswick Press, for instance, ever since the old days of its connection with the tasteful and well printed volumes from the house of Pickering. Various artists, too, in a.s.sociation with their book designs, from D. G. Rossetti onwards, have designed their own lettering to be in decorative harmony with their designs. The Century Guild, with its "Hobby Horse" and its artists, like Mr. Horne and Mr. Selwyn Image, did much to keep alive true taste in printing and book decoration, when they were but little understood.[7]

There have been printers, too, such as Mr. Daniel at Oxford, and De Vinne at New York, who have from different points of view brought care and selection to the choice of type and the printing of books, and have adapted or designed type.

[7] And they elicited a response from across the water in the shape of "The Knight Errant," the work of a band of young enthusiasts at Boston, Ma.s.s., of which Mr. Lee and Mr. Goodhue may be named as leading spirits--the latter being the designer of the cover of "The Knight Errant," and the former the printer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SELWYN IMAGE.

FROM t.i.tLE-PAGE. "THE SCOTTISH ART REVIEW" (SCOTT, 1889).]

[Sidenote: THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.]

But the field for extensive artistic experiment in these directions was tolerably clear when Mr. William Morris turned his attention to printing, and, in 1891, founded the Kelmscott Press.

So far as I am aware, he has been the first to approach the craft of practical printing from the point of view of the artist, and although, no doubt, the fact of being a man of letters as well was an extra advantage, his particular success in the art of printing is due to the former qualification. A long and distinguished practice as a designer in other matters of decorative art brought him to the nice questions of type design, its place upon the page, and its relation to printed ornament and ill.u.s.tration, peculiarly well equipped; while his historic knowledge and discrimination, and the possession of an extraordinarily rich and choice collection of both mediaeval MSS. and early printed books afforded him an abundant choice of the best models.

In the results which have been produced at the Kelmscott press we trace the effect of all these influences, acting under the strongest personal predilection, and a mediaeval bias (in an artistic sense) which may be said to be almost exclusive.

The Kelmscott roman type ("golden") perhaps rather suggests that it was designed to antic.i.p.ate and to provide against the demand of readers or book fanciers who could stand nothing else than roman, while the heart of the printer really hankered after black letter. But compare this "golden"

type with most modern lower case founts, up to the date of its use, and its advantages both in form and substance are remarkable. Modern type, obeying, I suppose, a resistless law of evolution, had reached, especially with American printers, the last stage of attenuation. The type of the Kelmscott press is an emphatic and practical protest against this attenuation; just as its bold black and white ornaments and decorative woodcuts in open line are protests against the undue thinness, atmospheric effect, and diaphanous vignetting by photographic process and tone-block of much modern ill.u.s.tration, which may indeed _ill.u.s.trate_, but does not _ornament_ a book. The paper, too, hand-made, rough-surfaced, and tough, is in equally strong contrast to the shiny hot-pressed machine-made paper, hitherto so much in vogue for the finer kinds of printing, and by which it alone became possible. The two kinds--the two ideals of printing--are as far apart as the poles. Those who like the smooth and thin, will not like the bold and rough; but it looks as if the Kelmscott standard had marked the turn of the tide, and that, judging from the signs of its influence upon printers and publishers generally, the feeling is running strongly in that direction.

(One would think the human eyesight would benefit also.) This is the more remarkable since the Kelmscott books are by no means issued at "popular prices," are limited in number, and for the most part are hardly for the general reader--unless that ubiquitous person is more erudite and omnivorous than is commonly credited.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM MORRIS & WALTER CRANE.

A PAGE FROM "THE GLITTERING PLAIN." (KELMSCOTT PRESS, 1894.)]

Books, however, which may be called monumental in the national and general sense, have been printed at the Kelmscott press, such as Shakespeare's "Poems," More's "Utopia"; and Mr. Morris's _magnum opus_, the folio Chaucer, enriched by the designs of Burne-Jones, has recently been completed.[8]

[8] Completed, indeed, it might almost be said, with the life of the craftsman. It is sad to have to record, while these pages were pa.s.sing through the press, our master printer--one of the greatest Englishmen of our time--is no more.

In Mr. Morris's ornaments and initials, nearly always admirably harmonious in their quant.i.ties with the character and ma.s.s of the type, we may perhaps trace mixed influences in design. In the rich black and white scroll and floral borders surrounding the t.i.tle and first pages, we seem to see the love of close-filling and interlacement characteristic of Celtic and Byzantine work, with a touch of the feeling of the practical textile designer, which comes out again in the up-and-down, detached bold page ornaments, though here combined with suggestions from early English illuminated MS.

These influences, however, only add to the distinctive character and richness of the effect, and no attempt is made to get beyond the simple conditions of bold black and white designs for the woodcut and the press.

Mr. Morris adopts the useful canon in printing that the true page is what the open book displays--what is generally termed a double page. He considers them practically as two columns of type, necessarily separate owing to the construction of the book, but together as it lies open, forming a page of type, only divided by the narrow margin where the leaves are inserted in the back of the covers. We thus get the _recto_ and the _verso_ pages or columns, each with their distinctive proportions of margin, as they turn to the right or the left from the centre of the book--the narrowest margins being naturally inwards and at the top, the broadest those outwards and at the foot, which latter should be deepest of all. It may be called _the handle_ of the book, and there is reason in the broad margin, though also gracious to the eye, since the hand may hold the book without covering any of the type.

It is really the due consideration of the necessity of these little utilities in the construction and use of a thing which enables the modern designer--separated as he is from the actual maker--to preserve that distinctive and organic character in any work so valuable, and always so fruitful in artistic suggestion, and this I think holds true of all design in a.s.sociation with handicraft.

The more immediate and intimate--one might occasionally say imitative--influence of the Kelmscott press may be seen in the extremely interesting work of a group of young artists who own their training to the Birmingham School of Art, as developed under the taste and ability of Mr. Taylor. Three of these, Mr. C. M. Gere, Mr. E.

H. New, and Mr. Gaskin, have designed ill.u.s.trations for some of Mr.

Morris's Kelmscott books, so that the connection of ideas is perfectly sequent and natural, and it is only as might be expected that the school should have the courage of their artistic opinions, and boldly carry into practice the results of their Kelmscott inspirations, by printing a journal themselves, "The Quest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: C. M. GERE.

FROM THE "ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATED MAGAZINE" (1893).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: (_By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool._) C. M.

GERE.

FROM A DRAWING FROM HIS PICTURE "THE BIRTH OF ST. GEORGE."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARTHUR GASKIN.

FROM "HANS ANDERSEN." (ALLEN, 1893.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDMUND H. NEW.

PROCESS BLOCK FROM THE ORIGINAL PEN DRAWING.]

[Sidenote: THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL.]

Mr. Gere, Mr. Gaskin, and Mr. New may be said to be the leaders of the Birmingham School. Mr. Gere has engraved on wood some of his own designs, and he thoroughly realizes the ornamental value of bold and open line drawing in a.s.sociation with lettering, and is a careful and conscientious draughtsman and painter besides. A typical instance of his work is the "Finding of St. George."

Mr. Gaskin's Christmas book, "King Wenceslas," is, perhaps, his best work so far as we have seen. The designs are simple and bold, and in harmony with the subject, and good in decorative character. His ill.u.s.trations to Hans Christian Andersen's "Fairy Tales" are full of a nave romantic feeling, and have much sense of the decorative possibilities of black and white drawing. Mrs. Gaskin's designs for children's books show a quaint fancy and ornamental feeling characteristic of the school.