Essex House Press
The Essex House Press was an English private printing .
history
The English craftsman, designer and architect Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942) founded the "Guild and School of Handicraft" in 1888, a craft school and community that existed until 1907.
About 10 years after it was founded, Ashbee attached its press, the Essex House Press, to the school.
Essex House in London, the seat of the artisan community, coined the name of the press.
After the guild moved to Chipping Campden in 1902 and its dissolution in 1907, Ashbee worked for the press until 1910, which Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy had taken over.
Ashbee represented the social and artistic views of William Morris and John Ruskin . Both were his teachers and role models, whose demands he tried to realize.
After Ashbee, social living conditions first had to be improved in order to revive the arts and crafts. The art of handicraft, the enrichment of the quality of life through the handicraft creation process and the beauty of the created should find their way into everyday life.
The Essex House Press was not only another way for Ashbee to be artistically active, but also to spread the guild's program, its art theories. After the closure of the " Kelmscott Press ", Ashbee acquired some of the material used here for its press, including the hand presses . Like Morris, he obtained his paper from Joseph Batchelor's paper mill and had the paper embossed with watermarks. The press logo represented a wild carnation.
Ashbee designed the "Endeavor-Type" font for the press, which is closely related to the " Golden-Type ". The type was used in 1901 for the printing of the book "An Endeavor towards the Teaching of John Ruskin and William Morris". The second type created by Ashbee, the "Prayer-Book-Type", was used in 1903 for the print "The Prayer Book of King Edward VII".
swell
- Michaela Braesel: The "Private Press Movement" . In: Gutenberg Museum (Ed.): In Search of the Ideal Book. William Morris and the 1896 Chaucer edition of Kelmscott Press . Mainz 1996, pp. 62-64
- Friedrich Adolf Schmidt-Künsemüller: William Morris and the newer book art . In: Carl Wehmer (Ed.): Contributions to books and libraries . Vol. 4, Wiesbaden 1955, pp. 66-67
- Essex House Press
literature
- Charles Robert Ashbee : The private press. A study in idealism. To which is added a bibliography of the Essex House Press . Norman Chapel, Broad Campden 1909 (Limited edition of 127 copies, 2 of which on parchment).
- Alan Crawford: CR Ashbee. Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist . Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1985, ISBN 0-300-03467-9 .
- Davis & Langdale Company (Eds.): Objects from the British arts and crafts movement . Davis & Langdale Company, New York NY 1993.
- Peter Stansky : William Morris, CR Ashbee, and the Arts and Crafts . Nine Elms Press, London 1984, ISBN 0-947576-00-2 .