Utopia

Utopia

William Morris (1834-1896), product of an upper-middle class upbringing of the 19th century, was actually a socialist with a great reverence for the skilled craftsman whose output was a product of labour done by hand, rather than that of mass-produced mechanization. Disgruntled with the uniform and shoddy artistic production of the Age of Industrialization of the London of his time, Morris looked back to the artists of the past for inspiration. A true Renaissance man if ever there was one, Morris was involved in almost every branch of the Arts : textiles, metal work, furniture making, architecture, stained glass, decorative arts, painting, literature, and indeed, book production. As with his other endeavours within the Arts, Morris turned to the pre-mechanized age for inspiration with book printing: the era of the hand-press. Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891. All aspects of Kelmscott Press books were produced by hand : the paper, the binding, the pressing of an edition, and the fonts. Morris designed the fonts used at his Press himself, with Chaucer (designed for his magnum opus “The Kelmscott Chaucer”, Golden (designed for his printing of Voraigne’s Golden Legend) and Troy being his most famous.

More, Thomas, Saint (1478-1535)

Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa [HX811 1516. E893 1893]

Hammersmith, William Morris at the Kelmscott Press

1893

Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa

Book

English

Text

ARSC_PR_HX811 1516. E893 1893