Style in the Use of Type

Among the illustrations common to books on typography there is a familiar plate which is an admirable lesson to the modern printer—that showing the 1486 specimen sheet of Erhard Ratdolt of Venice and Augsburg, which exhibits the types that Ratdolt had in his office and with which he made his books. There are ten sizes of black-letter, three sizes of roman type, and one size of Greek, and with these and the use of handsome initials he produced beautiful effects. The books printed from this limited collection of types were beautiful because the types were so in themselves and because the very limitations of his material produced a restraint and harmony that gave the work style. To-day, no printing-house would dare to confine itself to such a small equipment.

Again, the cases of books exhibited in the King’s Library at the British Museum have long seemed to me among the most valuable of courses in typographic education. And the contents of those cases especially which contain the Italian books are educative in the particular of style beyond the others. In fact, to digress a little, no man, I think, can study this splendid collection without recognizing the preëminent excellence of Italian work in the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. There is about it a sanity, a lucidity, and a severity which excels the work of other nationalities. One thing about these books is most apparent: that they are related to the book as we know it to-day, which the black-letter books are not. The latter speak of a time which is to the modern man largely an archaeological curiosity. For as a writer on the Renaissance has said, “the rest of Europe was free either to repel or else partly or wholly to accept the mighty impulse which came forth from Italy. Where the latter was the case we may as well be spared the complaints over the early decay of mediaeval faith and civilization. Had these been strong enough to hold their ground, they would be alive to this day. If those elegiac natures which long to see them return, could pass but one hour in the midst of them, they would gasp to be back in modern air.” And this is true not alone of thought but of life, of the arts and of the trades. I am aware that this is not palatable to those admirers of Ruskin (if anybody reads him nowadays) who accustom themselves to alluding to “the foul torrent of the Renaissance,” but who forget that Mr. Ruskin’s books were printed in a kind of type which the Renaissance was the first to give! But this is a digression.

The books which had great style and elegance were not, it appears, necessarily dependent upon archaic treatment for these qualities; and are related to books as we to-day know them, more intimately than any that preceded them. From this I should state as an axiom that a book in order to possess style need not be archaic. This self-evident truth is expressed only for the benefit of persons who, possessing more knowledge than judgment, have worked as if they thought otherwise.

Another quality that makes for style is simplicity; and here again the Italian books have much to teach us. They were strictly simple, depending only on beautiful type, good paper, and a well-proportioned type-page to produce a very elegant result. Any one can place a great red decorated initial upon a page to dazzle the beholder into a momentary liking for the effect. But to produce an agreeable and pleasing page simply by proportion of margins, type, etc., is a matter which requires study, experience, and taste. It appears, therefore, that, as some of the most beautiful books are without decoration, style does not depend upon decoration, but rather on proportion and simplicity.

While to my mind the Italian books of the Renaissance possess the highest qualities of style that the world has seen, I believe it possible to attain much of the same quality in almost any manner that a man may choose to adopt. In this connection one should mention William Morris’s work, which possessed great distinction and style. One may agree or disagree with the conclusions he arrived at as to which books were the most beautiful models in printing, but he taught mightily by the body of colour and unity of effect which his beautiful pages display. He understood the style in which he worked, its capabilities and its disabilities. He made use even of its disabilities in a way that was decorative.

I have said that distinction of manner is happily not confined to Italian books, nor to the school of Mr. Morris. Nor is it confined to any one set of people. The worker who saw the value of simplicity, proportion, and colour has existed at various times in all countries. We find these qualities in much beautiful sixteenth century French work—that of the Estiennes, for example—and in some of the earliest German work, terrible as certain periods have been in Germany. But if it is the fashion for the Anglo-Saxon to smile self-complacently at some of the Continental printing of the present day, it must be remembered that English printing, which now stands (in my opinion) at the head of typographic achievement, has never been so before. In fact, English printing has not furnished interesting or valuable object lessons in style until within the last hundred and fifty years, and in this statement—which I should hesitate, perhaps, to make unsupported—I am glad to find myself borne out by Mr. Alfred Pollard, who remarks: “It is quite easy to be struck with the inferiority of English books and their accessories, such as bindings and illustrations, to those produced on the Continent. To compare the books printed by Caxton with the best work of his German or Italian contemporaries, to compare the books bound for Henry, Prince of Wales, with those bound for the Kings of France, to try to find even a dozen English books printed before 1640 with woodcuts (not imported from abroad) of any real artistic merit—if any one is anxious to reinforce his national modesty, here are three very efficacious methods of doing it.... And if I am asked at what period English printing has attained that occasional primacy which I have claimed for our exponents of all the bookish arts, I would boldly say that it possesses it at the present day.”

Again, “manner” may be used with charm, and by this I mean a local and characteristic variant of a real style, which has come to have a literary and historical association of its own. What we call colonial (or Georgian) printing is nothing more than a rendering (often an overstatement) of certain features of seventeenth and eighteenth century English printing. It is well adapted for old-fashioned reprints, or for commercial work intended to describe or to sell old-fashioned wares, though it is often used as having in itself a beauty which renders it independent of its fitness. The “colonist,” could he see the baskets of flowers magnified to the dimensions of giant chap-book illustrations, would disown any part in such obstreperous decoration. The average ornamentation of such books was not of this genre at all, but was rather timid in effect. Yet such colonial typography sometimes possesses style. But it must be remembered that style, being dependent on proportion and simplicity, is more readily to be found in work whose mannerisms are less marked and where there is less decoration. With the quaint features and decorations of “colonial” printing suppressed, there is very little left of it. The excellence of any given style seems to consist in its power to exist apart from such things, and thus the better the style, the less dependent it is on earmarks or whimsicality.

But there must sometimes be decoration, and here of course enters the element of individual taste. Here again early Italian and French books show that, with a little well-chosen decoration,—just enough to give an air of careful luxury,—the greatest elegance of effect can be arrived at. In all the schools of ornament, again, there is special work which, through its grace and reserve, possesses this same happy quality of style and elegance. In many modern books there are ornamental title-pages which have this quality to a very high degree—instances where the introduction of a very little good ornament seems to shed over the whole book in which it is employed a light of luxury and grace. The early printers, in many of their beautiful marks, grasped this idea. With a very plain, simple title-page there was yet one spot of decoration, graceful in outline, rich in colour. Badly conceived ornamentation and the abuse of good ornament have become so general that one is tempted sometimes to think that the art of decoration is the art of leaving things out!

Finally, if all work reflects the life of the day in which it is undertaken, to-day’s restless and complex life may be reflected in our work, which, in its lack of simplicity and repose, may be but an echo of the time. Possibly, the tasteless exaggeration, and the desire to excel our neighbour in startling effects which we see exemplified in some American printing, may be traced to certain evil qualities in American life. But, on the other hand, the interest in varying styles of work and the open-minded acceptance of them for the printer’s purposes is a happy feature of industrial endeavour to-day, and one, too, which is characteristic of our epoch and country. It would be idle to expect in the art of printing that concerted harmony which we do not find in architecture, in painting, or in literature. We must recognize this lack of concert, whether we like it or not. Instead of wishing it otherwise, it is better to accept it, and make the best of it.

To conclude, style in printing does not permanently reside in any one manner of work, but in those principles on which almost all manners of work may be based. We have to be thankful that of late things are turning in the direction of greater simplicity, greater reserve, and less decoration. And as the printer is more and more deprived of adventitious aids, he will find himself face to face with those fundamental principles of style which have marked the work of the great printers of the past; as they must the work of those to come.

The Seven Champions of Typography