Private Press

Private Press and the Arts & Crafts Movement

Private Press in Britain has its roots in the English Arts and Crafts movement. There was a great flowering of these handmade books in the late 19th century, at a time when technology had made it much easier and cheaper to produce books and illustrations in larger numbers. The early Private Presses and the Arts & Crafts Movement both strove to re-engage with more traditional values of craftsmanship and artistry, spearheaded to a large degree by the author, designer and artist William Morris. Morris had himself been inspired to create his own press, The Kelmscott Press, after attending a talk on ‘Letterpress Printing and Illustration’ at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’s first exhibition in 1888, given by Emery Walker (subsequently co-founder of The Doves Press).

The Kelmscott, Doves and Ashendene Press represent the "holy trinity" of the early private presses in Britain. The exceptional production values of the books produced by these three set the bar very high for the other private presses that were to follow, and include some of the finest rare books of all time. The Kelmscott Chaucer, the Doves Press Bible and the Ashendene Dante are considered by many rare book collectors to represent the pinnacle of the Private Press movement.

Private Press of the 20th Century

The Eragny Press (founded by Lucien Pissarro) and the Vale Press (founded by Charles Ricketts) provide a bridge between the private presses of the 19th and 20th centuries, both distinct in terms of style but both enshrining the return to traditional book-making values. The 1920s saw a number of important private presses spring up, including the Golden Cockerel Press, the Nonesuch Press and the Gregynog Press, seeing something of a renaissance in the use of woodcut illustrations thanks to artists such as Eric Gill, Eric Ravilious, Blair Hughes Stanton, John Buckland Wright and Robert Gibbings. Whilst the limited print-runs for works by these presses tend to number between 150 and 750, they also often produced deluxe editions in much smaller numbers, printed for example on vellum and in fine leather or vellum bindings.

The market for such relatively expensive books did decline somewhat during the 20th century, due to general economic downturns and occasional improvement in some aspects of mainstream book production. However, the torch for traditional book arts was successfully carried on by more modern presses such as The Whittington Press and the Parvenu Press. Today there has been a resurgence of interest in the Private Press tradition, an apposite response to the ongoing trend for digitisation perhaps.