![Doves Press Bible](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Doves_Press_Bible.jpg)
The Doves Press was a
private press
Private press publishing, with respect to books, is an endeavor performed by craft-based expert or aspiring artisans, either amateur or professional, who, among other things, print and build books, typically by hand, with emphasis on design, gra ...
based in
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
...
, London. During nearly seventeen years of operation, the Doves Press produced notable examples of twentieth-century typography. A distinguishing feature of its books was a specially-devised
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
, known variously as the Doves Roman, the Doves Press Fount of Type, or simply the Doves
type.
The Doves Press business
The Doves Press was founded by
T. J. Cobden-Sanderson before 1900 when he asked
Emery Walker
Sir Emery Walker FSA (2 April 1851 – 22 July 1933) was an English engraver, photographer and printer. Walker took an active role in many organisations that were at the heart of the Arts and Crafts movement, including the Art Workers Gui ...
to join him. The business was financed by
Anne Cobden-Sanderson
Julia Sarah Anne Cobden-Sanderson (; 26 March 1853 – 2 November 1926) was an English socialist, suffragette and vegetarian.
Life
Cobden was born in London in 1853 to Catherine Anne and the radical politician Richard Cobden. After her father ...
. Their partnership was dissolved in 1908 but Cobden-Sanderson continued to print.
Cobden-Sanderson commissioned the press's
type, which was drawn under Walker's supervision, and the Doves
Bindery
Bindery refers to a studio, workshop or factory where sheets of (usually) paper are fastened together to make books, but also where gold and other decorative elements are added to the exterior of books, where boxes or slipcases for books are made ...
which he had set up in 1893 bound the books he and Walker printed. The Press produced all its books using a single size of this type, between 1900 and 1916, and is considered to have been a significant contributor to the
Arts and Crafts movement. The founders were associated with
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
and the
Kelmscott Press
The Kelmscott Press, founded by William Morris and Emery Walker, published fifty-three books in sixty-six volumes between 1891 and 1898. Each book was designed and ornamented by Morris and printed by hand in limited editions of around 300. Many ...
. The capital letters of the Doves type were based on types used by
Nicolas Jenson
Nicholas Jenson (c. 1420 – 1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the creator of on ...
from the 1470s, and the lowercase were based on types used by
Jacobus Rubeus similar to Morris's earlier
Golden Type
The Golden Type is a serif font designed by artist William Morris for his fine book printing project, the Kelmscott Press, in 1890. It is an "old-style" serif font, based on type designed by engraver and printer Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 147 ...
and, like it, cut by
punchcutter
Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...
Edward Prince
Edward Philip Prince (1846–1923) was a British engraver and punchcutter, a cutter of the punches used to stamp the matrices used to cast metal type.
Working during the period of the Arts and Crafts movement, after William Morris's Kelmscott Pr ...
.
The press, at No. 1,
Hammersmith Terrace
Hammersmith Terrace is a street of listed, brick-built houses in Hammersmith, west London. All of the seventeen houses in the terrace are Grade II listed, except No. 7 which is Grade II*. The street was built in about 1770 and has been home t ...
, was named after
The Dove, an old riverside pub nearby. The Doves Press was responsible for the Doves Bible (5 vols, 1902–1904), which is considered to be one of the best examples of its kind.
The Doves type dispute
By 1909 Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were in a protracted and bitter dispute involving the rights to the Doves Type in the dissolution of their partnership. As part of the partnership dissolution agreement, all rights to the Doves Type were to pass to Walker upon the death of Cobden-Sanderson. Instead of letting this happen, Cobden-Sanderson destroyed the
matrices
Matrix most commonly refers to:
* ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise
** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film
** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...
and punches on Good Friday, 21 March 1913, when he threw them into the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
river off
Hammersmith Bridge
Hammersmith Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the River Thames in west London. It links the southern part of Hammersmith in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, on the north side of the river, and Barnes in the London Borough ...
in London, a short walk from the Press. As further recorded in his journals, he began the destruction of the type three years later, beginning 31 August 1916 at midnight, when "it seemed a suitable night, and time". He is said to have completed the task in January 1917, after 170 trips to the river, though his Journals do not mention the culmination.
Re-creating the Doves type
The first digital revival of the Doves Type was made in 1994 by Swedish designer Torbjörn Olsson who added a new italic, and whose fonts reproduce the soft corners and imperfections of the printed characters.
In 2013, the designer Robert Green began to create a more polished digital version of the Doves type. In 2015, after searching the riverbed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge with help from the
Port of London Authority
The Port of London Authority (PLA) is a self-funding public trust established on 31 March 1909 in accordance with the Port of London Act 1908 to govern the Port of London. Its responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames and its ...
, Green managed to recover 150 pieces of the original type, which helped him to refine the font.
The re-created Doves Type is distributed by Typespec. Other digital revival projects are "Mebinac" by Alan Hayward and "Thames-Capsule" by Raphaël Verona and Gaël Faure.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
:Private press movement
References
Sources
*
Further reading
* Cable, C. (1974). The printing types of the Doves press: Their history and destruction. ''Library Quarterly, 44''(3), 219-230.
External links
The Doves Type at Typespec official websiteAn Obsessive Typepodcast by BBC Radio 4
{{Authority control
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
Small press publishing companies
Private press movement