I blogged last year about the watermark of an Ox in a leaf from an early printed book, called the Golden Legend, that I had bought.
This early book was from 1527 and printed by the first printer to set up in Fleet Street, the father of the British Press, Wynkyn de Worde.
I am now the proud owner of a page from another edition of “The Golden Legend”, this time from probably the most famous English Press ever, the Kelmscott Press.
William Morris was the genius artist, designer, writer, socialist activist and leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, who founded the press in the 1890s in order to create the most beautiful books he could, following in a tradition of medieval influence, using hand-made paper and special inks.
“History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.”
This is something really special and I am so proud to have a leaf to go alongside my page from Wynkyn de Worde’s edition of 1527.
The book is a famous text by Jacobus Da Voraigne and incredibly popular in medieval times, often reprinted, with apocryphal stories about saints. My original leaf is about Saint Urban, this Kelmscott leaf is about Saint Bernard – no dog mentioned, although his mother did dream while pregnant of a “whelp al whyte, and rede upon the backe, barkyng in her bely”.
The font is Golden – a Roman type similar to those created by 15th-century Venetian printers such as Aldus Manutius.
Here is a detail of one of the Drop Caps – isn’t it beautiful, there are three instances of the letter A in the leaf, all different from each other.
and of course there is a hidden watermark here too – Morris designed 3 marks, depending on the size of the sheet, mine is called Primrose and here is his design – the W and M on each side are based on an ancient font style called Lombard and are reversible as you can see. The others were “Perch” and “Apple”.
And here is the watermark itself, not easy to make out unfortunately, but hopefully you can see it.
My friend Peter the paper historian has told me:
William Morris had all the Kelmscott Press paper made by Joseph Batchelor & Son at Ford Mill, Little Chart, Kent.(see attached) The paper was made in three sizes, each with its own watermark, Morris designed the watermarks himself: an Apple, with the initials WM, a Flower with WM and a Perch with the WM initials. Two of the original papermaking moulds were acquired from Sidney Cockerell, one of Morris’ executors, by one of the Cambridge University Libraries. Morris had a go at making paper by hand when he visited the mill – much to the amusement of the papermakers.
Finally to compare here is the ox head watermark from the 1527 edition of the same book!
And here is the full page of the other edition to compare, 370 years apart.
