![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/12\/Leaf-1.png\")
Printing in 1800s Britain<\/h1>\n
Before the 1800s, typography in Britain was an \u201cundistinguished craft\u201d\u2014 a means and an activity, but not an art (Handover 139). The century that followed brought with immense technological advancement, in all areas of production, including printing technology. According to P.M. Handover, the The Industrial Revolution had three key impacts on printing in Britain (140). Firstly, as populations in urban areas grew, so did the possible market of readership. Secondly, as the number of goods produced by newly developed technologies rose, so did the demand for advertisement, and printing met that demand. Finally, the technological means that produced such goods impacted printing itself, imbuing the process with technologies that printed faster and in larger quantities.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEvery year and almost every month the Victorian printer heard of new inventions,\u201d (Handover 151), of which the most important was the first steam-powered press (see fig. 1). Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer\u2019s invention could print 1,100 impressions per hour. With improvements based on a model by Thomas Bensley, British engineers Augustus Applegate <\/span>and Edward Cowper made printing by steam press even more efficient. T<\/span>heir <\/i>four-feeder machine was later eclipsed by the vertical eight-feeder in 1848, and in 1857, <\/span>that<\/em> machine by one nicknamed \u201cLightning Press\u201d that required twenty four people to operate and made 20,000 impressions an hour (Handover 150). A decade later, the Walter Press, a much more compact machine, replaced the \u201cLightning Press\u201d\u00a0 in newspaper offices across Britain with an output of 12,000 eight-page copies an hour (150).<\/span><\/p>\n These extraordinary machines were used in newspaper offices as opposed to by book and periodical publishers, the latter of which typically printed on smaller, less powerful printers such as the Wharfedale, a stop-cylinder press (Handover 150). Periodicals had much smaller circulation numbers and so did not need such mammoths of machines. Still, the newspaper\u2019s extraordinary outputs had reverberating effects on typography in all methods of printing throughout Britain. Handover thinks of two lines of an 1827 poem by John McCreery poem that summarize (143):<\/span><\/p>\n Where\u2019er we cast our eye,<\/i><\/p>\n For steam and cheapness there is one dull cry.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n With industrial efficiency came the alienation of the craftsperson, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it is in this landscape of increasing mechanization that the <\/span>The Dial <\/span><\/em><\/a>and its periodical predecessors came into being. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood\u2019s <\/span>The Germ<\/span><\/em>, which Ricketts credited as the inspiration for <\/span>The Dial <\/span><\/i>(Kooistra, General Introduction<\/a><\/span>) originated the model that other little magazines throughout the century would follow, joining literature and art in its pages (Martin 75). In \u201cThe Century Guild Hobby Horse: Crafting Generic Networks in Fin-de-Si\u00e8cle<\/em> England,\u201d Rebecca N. Mitchell writes that The Century Guild\u2019s <\/span>Century Guild Hobby Horse (CGHH) <\/span><\/em>took on <\/span>The Germ<\/span><\/em>\u2019s model, paving the way for other little magazines of the 1890s. The Guild\u2019s focus on exclusivity and craftsmanship in the face of expansion and mass production appealed to Charles Ricketts and his partner Charles Shannon, who were not only inspired by the <\/span>CGHH <\/span><\/em>but also enlisted editor Herbert Horne\u2019s help at crucial points of publishing <\/span>The Dial <\/span><\/em>and exchanged <\/span>ideas on materials and processes (Mitchell 91).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n CGHH<\/em> <\/span>embodied certain principles that Emery Walker would later emphasize in his influential lecture on fine printing at the Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1888, such as the importance of large margins (Mitchell 99). It was this very lecture that inspired the creation of both the Kelmscott and the Vale presses (Kooistra, General Introduction<\/a>)<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n Morris and Ricketts shared a disdain for cheap printing and sought to revive fine print making practices of past ages (Mitchell 257). In Morris\u2019s work, Ricketts saw the craft and beauty that he thought missing in modern type, writing in \u201cWilliam Morris and His Influence on the Arts and Crafts\u201d that it is Morris\u2019s work with the Kelmscott Press that marked the \u201cinitial effort\u201d in the Revival of Fine Printing in Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Charles de Sousy Ricketts<\/a> devoted his life to art. In his youth, his frequent travels across France and Italy shaped his aesthetic taste. Visits to museums and galleries familiarized him early on with the \u201ccanons of European art,\u201d a knowledge he brought with him to the City and Guilds Technical Art School, where he trained a wood-engraver (Frankel). In the previous three decades, woodcutting was a lucrative and respected profession, but one that concerned itself primarily with mechanical reproduction (Frankel). Ricketts sought to bring the artist and the engraver together, choosing to approach wood-engraving as a method of original production. Though his primary art and craft was wood engraving, Ricketts worked in a variety of other mediums throughout his life, including costume design, writing, and, of course, typography design. Ricketts became a typographer through his two publishing ventures: <\/span>The Dial <\/span><\/em>and his fine printing press, The Vale Press.<\/span><\/p>\n In \u201cThe Little Magazine as a Periodical Portfolio: the Dial<\/em>, the Pagan Review<\/em> and the Page<\/em>,\u201d Koenraad Claes writes that both the Pre-Raphaelites and the \u201cArtistic Craftsmen\u201d prioritized \u201cthe material aspects of the work of art (74), and <\/span>The Dial<\/em>‘s volumes <\/a>reflect a commitment to the same. <\/span><\/p>\n The Dial<\/span><\/em> was typeset in an old-style typeface similar to the Caslon, and when more detail was desired, the text was engraved, such as on the covers and title pages (Claes 75). <\/span>The Dial<\/span><\/em>\u2019s <\/span><\/i>first volume used photomechanical reproduction on coated paper \u2014 a process Ricketts was dissatisfied with (Kooistra, General Introduction<\/a><\/span>). For Volumes 2\u20135, <\/span>The Dial<\/span><\/em>\u2019<\/span><\/i>s printing moved to the Ballantyne Press, and laid paper replaced the coated to ensure even inking and allow the text to stand out on the page (Kooistra, Critical Introduction to Volume 2<\/a><\/span>). From Volume 2<\/a> onwards, Ricketts opted for designing and engraving all ornaments and some illustrations himself, highlighting a medium in which the artist and craftsperson are one. In addition to its influence on other little magazines of the 1890s, <\/span>The Dial <\/span><\/em>can be viewed as an apprenticeship in the skills necessary for the forming of the Vale Press \u2014 printing, engraving, page layout, and typography (Kooistra, General Introduction<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Between <\/span>The Dial\u2019<\/span><\/em>s third<\/a> and fourth<\/a> volume, Ricketts established the Vale Press with Llewellyn Hacon. For the Vale Press books, Ricketts designed and engraved both the ornament and the typography himself. Engraving the fonts alone took him a year\u2019s time (Kooistra, Critical Introduction to Volume 4<\/a><\/span>). Just as the Kelmscott Press, the Vale Press formed in response to Walker\u2019s influential 1888 lecture on fine printing. A Kelmscott and a Vale Press book, writes Ricketts in <\/span>A Bibliography of the Books Issues by Hacon & Ricketts<\/span><\/em>, <\/span><\/i>\u201cis a living and corporate whole \u2026 it is concerned harmoniously with and made beautifully like any other genuine work of art\u201d (vii). A work of art, Ricketts believed, is a \u201cwhole in which each portion is exquisite in itself yet coordinate\u201d (vii). Each component of each Vale Press book was meticulously designed, including the fonts. For the Vale Press, Ricketts created three of them: the Vale, the Avon, and the King\u2019s. Although it had but a short run of eight years, the Vale Press significantly impacted small presses for years to come (Kooistra, Critical Introduction to Volume 4<\/a>)<\/span>. In 1930, A. J.A. Symons claimed that the modern typographer and graphic designer originated with Ricketts (Kooistra, Critical Introduction to Volume 4<\/a><\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n For Ricketts, excellent typography was about logic, balance, and control. <\/span>In <\/span>Of Typography and the Harmony of the Printed Page<\/span><\/em>, he claims that there is a fundamental link between the art of page-arrangement and typography. When comparing the \u201cclassic simplicity\u201d of setting up the page with the \u201cugliness and dullness of contemporary printing,\u201d he writes, meticulous attention to the page may look archaic (197). So, too, he continues, might attention to the letters on said page \u2014 any attempt to understand its forms, refine those forms through engraving, and through that engraving process, show \u201cthe influence of formative processes\u201d (197). Yet this attention, to both page and type, is the pathway to beauty. For Ricketts, it is <\/span>only <\/span><\/i>through understanding the forms of letters that typography becomes harmonious (198).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For Ricketts, the engraver\u2019s tool achieves what other means cannot. In <\/span>A Defence of the Revival of Fine Printing<\/span><\/em>, <\/span><\/i>he\u00a0 writes lovingly of the early elements of typography design: \u201cOnce in type each fault tells and is repeated over and over again; your stops, dots, accents must no longer be blurs; once shaped by the punch-cutter they must be shapes, diamonds, wedges; revised by the punch-cutter the curved terminations of the letters are no longer smears, they must show the shaping of the tool in the making of them, and so gain an added definiteness and beauty\u201d (7\u20138). It is through the control the engraver has over their material that definiteness is achieved, and it is through the showing of the engraving process that beauty<\/em> is.<\/span><\/p>\n Ricketts locates the biggest obstacle to good type in the \u201ceconomy of space\u201d \u2014 that temptation that pulls the printer to cram the page with letters, closer and closer to one another, in order to save on printing costs (9). No, Ricketts firmly held that letters need space to be seen, that type ought to be \u201cbold and legible (34). It is by \u201cfulness, roundness, and boldness\u201d that good type is characterized (9). Through deliberate design and placement, Ricketts writes, letters may be \u201crecast by the light of reason, and with due regard for beauty and proportion\u201d as with the best typographical efforts of the past (Ricketts, <\/span>A Bibliography<\/span><\/em> xii).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ricketts called for a revival of fine printing, the aim of which he saw as \u201ca wish to gain a permanent and beautiful form to that portion of our literature that is secure of permanence,\u201d and by permanence he meant not merely the inking of the page as a material thing, but \u201cpermanent in the sense that the work reflects that conscious aim towards beauty and order\u201d (Ricketts, <\/span>A Bibliography<\/span><\/em> xvi). This aim can be seen as the reaching for the eternal, a search in Modernity\u2019s transience, fleetingness, and contingency, for something immovable (Baudelaire 7). Thus, for Ricketts, typography is an element of a harmonious whole: part of a delicate balance, logically and carefully crafted as means of reaching for beauty, for the eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n In <\/span>A Defense of the Revival of Printing<\/span><\/em>, <\/span><\/i>Ricketts writes that line processing cannot obtain the delicate curves that wood-engraving can. There\u2019s a \u201cwarmth\u201d to wood-engraving: the creation of lines to be preserved in their entirety, with curves to be \u201cknelt\u201d or \u201cwelded\u201d (32). Like type, Ricketts writes, the engraving design benefits from meeting with the wood, \u201cthe material for which it is designed,\u201d becoming a stamp \u201cas if it were like the page of type itself\u201d (32). <\/span>In this statement, Ricketts reveals the fundamental similarity for him, between wood-engraving and typography: it is through an emphasis on the design and the carrying out of that design with precision and careful attention to the medium that excellence is reached in both. This section of the exhibit explores the link between ornament and type, arguing that the fluid lines and bold strokes that make up Ricketts\u2019s ornaments for The Dial<\/em>‘s second volume <\/a><\/span>can be seen, too, in the fonts he designed for The Vale Press.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy Hair is Filled with Drops of the Night\u201d (see fig. 7) is signed in more ways than one. If one looks closely, they\u2019ll see that the figure of the man curves into the letter \u201cC,\u201d and of the woman into an \u201cR,\u201d with her body contorting to meet the shape, torso twisted to turn the right knee to the side and up, the left elbow to lift and meet the head, the right elbow to move down and out, and the wrist to curve unnaturally first <\/span>to<\/span><\/i> the waist and then <\/span>away<\/span><\/i> at the fingers. Together, the man and woman form the shape that\u00a0 matches Ricketts\u2019s signature in the bottom left corner of the image. As the eye wanders, other letters appear: four Is in the lattice behind the couple (lattice planks that could also conceivably form Fs and Es), a lower-cased \u201cb\u201d at the handle of the door, an \u201cs\u201d repeated in the vines that curl around the lattice. (Special thanks to Christina Anto<\/a>, who spotted the “I” in “My Hair is Filled with Drops of Night” and sparked my analysis of this image.)<\/span><\/p>\n More and more letters pop up as one searches, so much so that it feels like reading too deeply into the shape of a leaf or the curve of an elbow. Yet that may be precisely the point \u2014 Ricketts encourages this reading by forming so obviously his initials into the two figures that he tempts the viewer to search for other letters. In presenting the illustration this way, Ricketts calls attention to what letters really are: collections of lines and shapes, or, in other words, forms.<\/span><\/p>\n Katherine Brideau argues for an understanding of typography in terms of form in <\/span>Book Typography and the Challenge to Linear Thought<\/span><\/em>. <\/span><\/i>Typography, she writes, is a strange medium: it is a mode of linguistic representation, but it is \u201cnot itself<\/span> a representation of language.\u201d Rather, it is a visualization \u2014 a visualization that simultaneously aims at invisibility. Typography\u2019s function as a carrier of linguistic meaning is a \u201ccloaking device\u201d: it is when we read typography that we least see it (Brideau 120). \u201cIn spite of its materiality,\u201d Brideau writes, \u201ctypography, like a window, is most often looked through rather than at\u201d (119). This exhibit aims to draw attention to typography not as something to read, but as something to <\/span>consider<\/span><\/em> and to <\/span>see<\/span><\/em>. To see typography in this way is to recognize it as marks on the page that exist outside of the linguistic expressions that combinations of such marks express, to think of it as, in Brideau’s words, \u201cinteracting shapes\u201d (235). <\/span>Brideau\u2019s framework is useful in analyzing the three fonts Ricketts created for the Vale Press.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first font Ricketts designed and the one he presented as part of the Arts contents of The Dial<\/em>\u2019s fourth volume<\/a><\/span>, forms the basis of the three. It is balanced, the shapes evenly distributed and sitting at the same height unless indicating a change of sentence. The serifs sit atop as if small leaves. The Vale is bold and vibrant; just like all of Ricketts\u2019s engravings, it is etched in with meticulous care. Each letter has been evidently considered. As opposed to simply inverting the \u201cn\u201d to make a \u201cu,\u201d the \u201cu\u201d has its own, distinct shape. <\/span>Combinations<\/span><\/i> of shapes have also been considered. When lower-cased \u201ce\u201d meets lower-cased \u201cy,\u201d becoming \u201cey,\u201d for instance, the slant of the \u201ce\u201d crossbar falls in angled harmony with the tail of the \u201cy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Vale\u2019s letters are smooth, with the exception of \u201cW,\u201d \u201cT,\u201d and \u201cI,\u201d and in these, sharpness is emphasized, just as it is in \u201cMy Hair is Filled with Drops of the Night\u201d (see fig. 7), in which the straight rays of the lantern and the 90\u00b0 angle of the wooden beams contrast the curved figures. The Os, Cs, Ds, and Gs of the Vale consist of satisfying curves that the eye picks up in \u201cThe Unwritten Book\u201d (see fig. 9) and \u201cMaurice de Gu\u00e9rin\u201d (see fig. 8)\u00a0 headpieces. Every line on the \u201cMaurice de Guerin\u201d is a curved line, and every stroke is bold. \u201cThe Unwritten Book\u201d headpiece\u2019s curved lines swirl like those of the lower-case \u201cb\u201d and \u201cd\u201d of the Vale. The vertical lines on the Vale \u201cb\u201d and \u201cd\u201d are rounded, reminiscent of the ladle-like shape at the entrance of \u201cMy Hair is Filled with Drops of the Night\u201d (see fig. 7).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Vale Press\u2019s second font is lighter in body, with a greater contrast <\/span>between thick and thin strokes. The serifs are smaller, and there is a tilt: the letter \u201co\u201d and all of the loop forms angle ever so slightly. For the books published in Avon, Ricketts kept the decoration minimal and opted for a thinner paper to suit the more delicate font (Ricketts, <\/span>A Bibliography<\/em> xxxiii). Some letters, like the \u201cQ\u201d gain longer tails that ornament the page, and some letters conjoin, like the \u201ca\u201d and the \u201ce.\u201d In comparison to the Vale, Avon is tighter and thinner. Though present in the Vale, Ricketts’s interrogation mark (the one that appears as if an exclamation point tentatively considering becoming a question mark), is perhaps most harmonious in the Avon, falling satisfyingly in line with the curves and angles of the this thinner font.<\/span><\/p>\n The whisper of strokes that form into the Avon can be seen in\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>![\"A](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/12\/Koenigs-steam-press-1814-300x227.png\")
![\"Illustrated](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Koenig%27s_steam_press_-_1814.png\")
Charles Ricketts<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Dial<\/em><\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nThe Vale Press<\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\nRicketts’s Philosophy of Typography<\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\nOrnament and Type<\/h1>\n
The Vale<\/h2>\n
The Avon<\/h2>\n