Prized papers of private press

second take

Much of my book-collecting these days is in the field of Book Arts with a focus on collecting private-press books. I don’t, of course, mean the expensive books from all those iconic private presses — Kelmscott, Doves, Ashendene — but finely printed books from modern private presses. Typically, a private press (also called a fine press) will put out books, prints and broadsides.

The books are pricey, but the broadsides and other ephemera can be had for less. A good place to start is collecting the prospectuses private presses issue to announce forthcoming titles. They aren’t sold by the printer or the press — book dealers put them on sale. And if you are looking to begin collecting these  books modestly, this is where I would suggest you make a start...

The tradition of most fine presses is to send out prospectuses that describe their next printing project to various book dealers, standing order customers, patrons, well-wishers and friends. They are there for information and to arouse interest in the new project, which will lead to orders and sales. (Many dealers and collectors have standing orders as subscribers for everything from the press they like).

The books and even prints from fine presses were beyond my budget (imagine what you will pay in rupees!) but the occasional broadsides and prospectuses were within reach. A prospectus is not the book, but many of them contain a sample page letterpress printed on expensive laid paper. They are sometimes even signed by the artist-printer.

For instance, a Bird and Bull Press prospectus of Henry Morris (a widely celebrated fine press printer who just retired) that I once bought was an announcement of a book about the inventor of the first papermaking machine (Louis-Nicholas Robert, 1798) in the world, with an essay on the paper historian Leonard B Schlosser. To my delight, it was inscribed and signed in ink at the end of the sheet by Morris to a patron. The work of many private presses also includes finely printed pamphlets, booklets and keepsakes.

One of my most treasured fine press keepsakes is a little thing, size 16mo, eight pages letterpress printed on handmade paper. Speedwell: Six Poems by the Benedictines of Stanbrook, a collection of poems (handset in Jan Van Krimpen’s Romanee type on Barcham Green handmade paper) by Benedictine nuns printed at the Stanbrook Abbey Press, which (I later learned) was probably the oldest private press in England. And it was operated and run by nuns who believed good presswork was holy work!

The poems were beautiful but I had bought it for the presswork. That’s nearly how it is when you are collecting fine press items: though slender, they are expensive. It’s not the volume you are paying for, but the craft and the material — Usually hand-composed, printed with metal types on creamy paper either hand- or mould-made, and often illustrated with woodcuts or hand-illuminated.

Perhaps you can see now why a collector will respect and cherish a fine press book above any other sort of book: it is the finest expression of the artifactual qualities of a book from the finest bookmakers. If you are interested in or curious about this kind of thing, there are dozens of good books about the history and bibliography of artist-printers, typographers, small presses and the private press movement.

Two classics in the field are Roderick Cave’s The Private Press and Colin Franklin’s The Private Presses. A more contemporary and stimulating commentary on present-day presswork are the books of Jerry Kelly, celebrated book and type designer, the author most recently of The Art of the Book and A Century for the Century: Fine Printed Books, 1900-1999.

By the 19th century, printing had become a huge industry, producing mediocre to ugly bookwork. William Morris (1834-1896), socialist, designer and printer, looked to the work of 15th century printers and found inspiration there to revive the private press with his Kelmscott Press in 1891.

Writing of his aims in founding such a press, Morris expresed famously, “I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty... I have always been a great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages and of the earlier printing which took its place.

As to the 15th-century books, I had noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography... And it was the essence of my undertaking to produce books which would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and arrangement of type.”