Chapter 6
the unit of the book being looked on as the two pages forming an opening. The modern printer, in the teeth of the evidence given by his own eyes, considers the single page as the unit, and prints the page in the middle of his paper--only nominally so, however, in many cases, since when he uses a headline he counts that in, the result as measured by the eye being that the lower margin is less than the top one, and that the whole opening has an upside-down look vertically, and that laterally the page looks as if it were being driven off the paper.
The paper on which the printing is to be done is a necessary part of our subject: of this it may be said that though there is some good paper made now, it is never used except for very expensive books, although it would not materially increase the cost in all but the very cheapest. The paper that is used for ordinary books is exceedingly bad even in this country, but is beaten in the race for vileness by that made in America, which is the worst conceivable. There seems to be no reason why ordinary paper should not be better made, even allowing the necessity for a very low price; but any improvement must be based on showing openly that the cheap article is cheap, e. g., the cheap paper should not sacrifice toughness and durability to a smooth and white surface, which should be indications of a delicacy of material and manufacture which would of necessity increase its cost. One fruitful source of badness in paper is the habit that publishers have of eking out a thin volume by printing it on thick paper almost of the substance of cardboard, a device which deceives nobody, and makes a book very unpleasant to read. On the whole, a small book should be printed on paper which is as thin as may be without being transparent. The paper used for printing the small highly ornamented French service-books about the beginning of the sixteenth century is a model in this respect, being thin, tough, and opaque. However, the fact must not be blinked that machine-made paper cannot in the nature of things be made of so good a texture as that made by hand.
The ornamentation of printed books is too wide a subject to be dealt with fully here; but one thing must be said on it. The essential point to be remembered is that the ornament, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should form part of the page, should be a part of the whole scheme of the book. Simple as this proposition is, it is necessary to be stated, because the modern practice is to disregard the relation between the printing and the ornament altogether, so that if the two are helpful to one another it is a mere matter of accident. The due relation of letter to pictures and other ornament was thoroughly understood by the old printers; so that even when the woodcuts are very rude indeed, the proportions of the page still give pleasure by the sense of richness that the cuts and letter together convey. When, as is most often the case, there is actual beauty in the cuts, the books so ornamented are amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever been produced. Therefore, granted well-designed type, due spacing of the lines and words, and proper position of the page on the paper, all books might be at least comely and well-looking: and if to these good qualities were added really beautiful ornament and pictures, printed books might once again illustrate to the full the position of our Society that a work of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so.
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NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION: The following pages showing the Troy and Chaucer types are printed from process blocks to insure fidelity to the originals. The frontispiece and first page of text are also reproduced in the same manner; page one, within the border, showing the Golden type, the only other type used by William Morris.
[Sidenote: This is the Troy type]
The following passages are given to show the Troy & Chaucer types, and four initials that were designed for the Froissart, but never used.
The land is a little land, Sirs, too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness: there are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden mountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another: little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily-changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep-walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison, nor palace, but a decent home.
All which I neither praise nor blame, but say that so it is: some people praise this homeliness overmuch, as if the land were the very axle-tree of the world; so do not I, nor any unblinded by pride in themselves and all that belongs to them: others there are who scorn it and the tameness of it: not I any the more: though it would indeed be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no wonders, no terrors, no unspeakable beauties. Yet when we think what a small part of the world's history, past, present, & to come, is this land we live in, and how much smaller still in the history of the arts, & yet how our forefathers clung to it, and with what care and
[Sidenote: This is the Chaucer type]
pains they adorned it, this unromantic, uneventful-looking land of England, surely by this too our hearts may be touched and our hope quickened.
For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubled themselves about such things; it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never a slave's nightmare or an insolent boast: & at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality, that grander styles have never overpassed: its best too, and that was in its very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman's house, and the humble village church, as to the lord's palace or the mighty cathedral: never coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, natural & unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of merchant princes or courtiers, it must be a hard heart, I think, that does not love it: whether a man has been born among it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the grandeur over-seas.
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And Science, we have loved her well, and followed her diligently, what will she do? I fear she is so much in the pay of the counting-house, the counting-house and the drill-sergeant, that she is too busy, and will for the present do nothing.
Yet there are matters which I should have thought easy for her, say for example teaching Manchester how to consume its own smoke, or Leeds how to get rid of its superfluous black dye without turning it into the river, which would be as much worth her attention as the production of the heaviest of heavy black silks, or the biggest of useless guns. Anyhow, however it be done, unless people care about carrying on their business without making the world hideous, how can they care about art? I know it will cost much both of time and money to better these things even a little; but I do not see how these can be better spent than in making life cheerful & honourable for others and for ourselves; and the gain of good life to the country at large that would result from men seriously setting about the bettering of the decency of our big towns would be priceless, even if nothing specially good befell the arts in consequence: I do not know that it would; but I should begin to think matters hopeful if men turned their attention to such things, and I repeat that, unless they do so, we can scarcely even begin with any hope our endeavours for the bettering of the Arts. (From the lecture called The Lesser Arts, in Hopes and Fears for Art, by William Morris, pages 22 and 33.)
The "Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press," the last book printed at the Kelmscott Press, contains a few errors in the "Bibliography." These errors have been allowed to stand in reprinting the "Note" here, in order that the reprint shall be a literal one.
Mr. S. C. Cockerell, the former Secretary of the Kelmscott Press, has kindly sent a list of these corrections, which appear below:
Page 19, line 21--"Golden type" should be inserted after "8vo."
Page 30, line 16--"June 26, 1893," should be "June 26, 1896."
Page 39, line 17--after "guineas" insert "ten on vellum at ten guineas."
Page 40, line 31--for "eight leaflets" read, "nine or ten leaflets."
Page 44, line 12--omit "Lady."
HERE ENDS THE ART AND CRAFT OF PRINTING; COLLECTED ESSAYS BY WILLIAM MORRIS. OF THIS BOOK THERE HAVE BEEN PRINTED TWO HUNDRED AND TEN COPIES BY CLARKE CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS: FINISHED THIS THIRTIETH DAY OF JANUARY MDCCCCII. SOLD BY CLARKE CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS, PELHAM ROAD, NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK.
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Transcriber's Notes:
For "A Note on Founding the Kelmscott Press"
Page 4: "trangress" changed to "transgress": "Modern printers systematically transgress against it"
Page 5: "artitcle" changed to "article": "the foregoing article was written"
Page 5: "Pysche" changed to "Psyche": "Cupid and Psyche"
Page 7: "rubicated" changed to "rubricated": "left blank to be rubricated by hand"
Page 12: "handmade" changed to "hand-made": "English hand-made paper"
Page 12: "Calendar" changed to "Calender": "Spenser's Shepheardes Calender"
Page 26: "H. W. Hooper" changed to "W. H. Hooper" in item 31.
Page 32: "water-mark" changed to "watermark": "with the apple watermark"
Page 40: The reference in item 52 to page 8 for "Love is Enough" was corrected to page 5.
Page 40: The reference in item 53 to page 7 for "The Earthly Paradise" was corrected to page 5. The reference to the ornaments on page 9 was corrected to page 7. The reference to page 17 was corrected to page 12.
Page 40: The reference in "Various Lists" to page 10 was corrected to page 6.
Page 43: "Milliam" changed to "William" in item 53
Page 44: The reference in "Various Lists" to page 57 was corrected to page 38.
For "The Ideal Book"
Page 1: "determation" changed to "determination": "a determination to put our eyes"
For "An Essay on Printing"
Page 12: "Maintz" changed to "Mainz": "printed at Mainz by"
Page 15: "Calson" changed to "Caslon": "Even the Caslon type when"
Page 16: "witout" changed to "without": "without enhancing the price"
Page 23: Period added after "over-seas": "all the grandeur over-seas."
General notes:
1. Paragraph breaks have been assumed in some places based on usage elsewhere in the text.
2. Both "caligraphy" and "calligraphy" are used in different parts of this book, and both forms were retained. This is also true for "d'Arthur" and "Darthur", "head-line" and "headline", "Sweynheim" and "Sweynheym", and "Zainer" and "Zeiner".
End of Project Gutenberg's The Art and Craft of Printing, by William Morris