The Art and Craft of Printing

THE ART AND CRAFT OF PRINTING, BY WILLIAM MORRIS. A NOTE BY WlLLIAM MORRIS ON HIS AIMS IN Note on lines and lastly the position of the printed matter on the founding the page. It was a matter of course that I should consider it Kelmscott necessary that the paper should be handmade, both for Press the sake of durability and appearance. It would be a very false economy to stint in the quality of the paper as to price so I had only to think about the kind of hand-made paper. On this head I came to two conclusions lst, that the paper must be wholly of linen most hand-made papers of cotton today, and must be quite hard, i. e., thoroughly well sized and Sud, that, though it must be laid and not wove i. e., made on a mould made of obvious wires, the lines caused by the wires of the mould must not be too stront, so as to give a ribbed appearance. I found that on these-points I as at one withihe practice of the papermakers of the fifteenth century so I took as my model a Bolotnese Daoer of about 1473. My friend Mr. Batchelor; of Kent, carried out my views very satisfactorily, and produced from the first the excellent paper, which I still us. Next as to type. By instinct rather than by conscious thinking it over, I began by getting myself a font of Roman type. And here what I wanted was letter pure in form severe, without needless excrescences solid, without the thickening and thinning of the line. which is the essential fault of geordinary Godern type, and which makes it difficult to read and not compressed laterally, as alllater type has grown to be owiugto commerciai exigencies. There was only one source from which to take examples of this erfected Roman he, to wit, the works of the great enetian printers of hi fifteeth centur, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This I studied with much care, getting it photographed to a Eg scale, and drawing it over many times before I began designing my own letter so that though I think I mastered the essence of it...........