"I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have
a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy
to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the
reader by eccentricity of form in the letters."
William Morris
In January 1891 William Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in order to
produce books by traditional methods using, as far as possible, the
printing technology and typographical style of the fifteenth century.
This reflected the tenets of the Arts and Crafts Movement and was
Morris's response to the mechanization and mass production then
permeating many aspects of daily life.
These books were designed to be read slowly, to be appreciated and
treasured. The Kelmscott Press was the most famous of the private
presses of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and inspired what became known
as the "Private Press Movement."
Morris produced beautiful editions of more than 50 books (printed in
more than 18,000 volumes), of his favourite authors, such as Chaucer
("The Works"), William Caxton ("The Order of Chivalry"), Sir Thomas More
("Utopia"), Shakespeare ("The Poems"), as well as poetry by Coleridge,
Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and himself.
The books of the Kelmscott Press contained titles, borders, and initials
designed by Morris, and woodcut illustrations after Edward Burne-Jones,
and represent the culmination of the artistic collaboration between
those two artists. They have become prime examples of
late-nineteenth-century decorative art."
