The Doves Press ‘Milton’, 1902

The Doves Press was founded in 1900 by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker ‘to attack the problem of typography as presented by ordinary books and  to attempt its solution by the simple arrangement of the whole Book, as a whole, with due regard to the emphasis of its capital divisions rather than by the addition and splendour of applied ornament’. The type was a fined down version of that used in Jenson’s edition of Pliny (1476) which combined with a gentler paper produced a page which is almost sophisticated in comparison with the archaism of Kelmscott. The typographic arrangement is majestic in its simplicity. Paradise Lost was published in 1902 and Paradise Regained in 1905, both in editions of copies, of which 2 S were on vellum.

Actual page size – 24cm x 17cm, printed on both sides. Mounted on grey board.

Original Leaf from a Famous European Book, each work with one-page letterpress index, the idea is that each leaf is mounted and subsequently framed to provide a unique wall decoration.

This was an old fund-raising exercise perfected by the Folio Society

 History of the Doves Press Fount

The Doves Press was a private press based in Hammersmith, 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 font, known variously as the Doves Roman, the Doves Press Fount of Type, or simply the Doves type.

The Doves Press was founded by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson before 1900 when he asked Emery Walker to join him. The business was financed by Anne Cobden-Sanderson. 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 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 and the Kelmscott Press. The Doves type was based on types used by Nicolas Jenson from the 1470s, similar to Morris’s earlier Golden Type, and like it cut by punchcutter Edward Prince.

The press, at No. 1, Hammersmith Terrace, 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.

 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, the matrices were destroyed by Cobden-Sanderson on Good Friday, 21 March 1913 by throwing them into the Thames river off Hammersmith Bridge in London, a short walk from the Press. As further recorded in his Journals, he began the destruction of the types 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.

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, 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.