The Kelmscott Albion press

Floor model Albion Press No. 6551, made by Hopkinson & Cope 1891, and used at the Kelmscott Press to print Morris's edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Photo detail © Christies Fine Art  (Press sold by Christies at auction in New York, 2013)

"When I first knew Morris nothing would content him but being a monk, and getting to Rome, and then he must be an architect, and apprenticed himself to Street, and worked for two years, but when I came to London and began to paint he threw it all up, and must paint too, and then he must give it up and make poems, and then he must give it up and make window hangings and pretty things, and when he had achieved that, he must be a poet again, and then two or three years of Earthly Paradise time, he must learn dyeing, and lived in a vat, and learned weaving, and knew all about looms, and then made more books,  and learned tapestry, and then wanted to smash everything up and begin the world anew, and now it is printing he cares for, and to make wonderful rich-looking books and all things he does splendidly -- and if he lives the printing will have an end -- but not I hope, before Chaucer and the Morte d'Arthur are done; and then he'll do I don't know what, but every minute will be alive."

Edward Burne-Jones on Morris, quoted by Fiona MacCarthy in William Morris, V& A Museum exhibition catalogue 1996

The Penny Post

"[Henry] Cole became the secretary [of the Mercantile Committee] and used the experience gained in the battle over public records to good effect [to campaign for a more efficient postal system].   [Rowland] Hill said of him:
' He was the author of almost innumerable devices, by which in his indefatigable ingenuity he contrived to draw public attention to the proposed measure.'
The most interesting of these was his weekly newspaper The Post Circular or Weekly Advocate for a Cheap, Swift & Sure Postage.   Newspapers were carried free by the Post Office, so Cole could distribute news, notices of meetings, forms of petitions to both Houses of Parliament and so on, all over the country for the cost of printing only.  Generally about 1700 copies of the Post Circular were sent out each week, so that the Post Office was forced to carry the propaganda for its own reform."

" The Edinburgh Mail' -wood engraving after Henry Cole The Post Circular, April 1839, captioned:
'This sketch - an exact representation of the contents of the Edinburgh Mail on the 2d March, 1838 -- has been designed for the particular instruction of the Postmaster-general, who, notwithstanding he stands at the head of the Post-Office class, has shown that he is at the bottom of it, in respect of knowledge of the rudiments of his business' ."

King Cole, A picture portrait of Sir Henry Cole, KCB 1808-1882  Elizabeth Bonython

The broken-backed "f "

"One of my most loved books -- I return to it again and again -- is that classic of bibliographical detection, a thousandfold more exciting than anything Agatha Christie and her kind ever penned, the majestically entitled An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter and Graham Pollard, which nailed one of the greatest bookmen in British history, Thomas J. Wise, as a forger, a swindler, and a thief.  The detection, however, was only made possible because the detectives were versed in every detail of bibliography, printing and the book trade; a lover of books and books' integrity can find tears in his eyes when contemplating the plate between pp. 58 and 59 of An Enquiry, in which the famous 'broken-backed f ', with its missing kern, brought nearer the solution of the mystery."

"Going by the Book"  The Times Saturday Review  Bernard Levin

Mr. Yatman's writing cabinet

The Yatman Cabinet, writing desk designed by William Burgess, painted by Edward Poynter, 1858
©  Victoria and Albert Museum.

The decoration shows the story of Cadmus of Thebes, who is credited with introducing the alphabet to Greeks,  and three images below show the cutting of cuneiform letters, Dante writing and Caxton printing, on the drop-down writing flap.

Baskerville, a Lunar man

"Perhaps it was because they were self-taught that such men seemed to think that anything they set their heart on was achievable. Baskerville had worked for years, challenging a notoriously conservative craft, before he printed his ground-breaking Virgil of 1757.  He not only designed new typefaces but cast the type and set it and improved printing-press design, paper-making and ink-making.  Many of his experiments had the lateral-thinking quality that marked the Lunar circle - an ad hoc, quick readiness to seize the potential of things near to hand, to test the properties of everything they stumbled across, whether it be rocks, metals, acids or tools.  Baskerville's lustrous, oily, near-purple ink gained its unique colour from being mixed with 'fine-black', soot collected from the glass-pinchers' and solderers' lamps; his paper's prized glaze came from 'hot-pressing', a mysterious process probably based on a technique from his japanning work."

The Lunar Men   Jenny Uglow