A bit of devil’s advocate (Morris and Book Set 3)

I don’t think I appreciate William Morris as much as people are saying I should.

I mean, his influence is entirely without question — he’s the Osamu Tezuka of the fine book trade. It’s just that instead of Astro Boy and Black Jack, we get curmudgeonly lectures about uneven margin sizes and the unspeakable atrocities of Bodoni. He’s the one who stoked the fires under the dormant artist’s book; he’s the immaculately high standard most contemporary bookmakers still hold themselves to; you can see his neat, high-quality fingerprints peppering nearly every stand-out fine press book of this century. I guess he deserves it, doesn’t he? He was an icon, wasn’t he? Sure, I mutter into my shirtsleeves.

I want to assert: I really enjoy his books. That edition of Chaucer, mm. If that thing were a dinner it’d have rib-eye in it. Honestly, I wouldn’t have any beef with Morris if he were simply a particularly venerable fine-bookmaker from the long line of 20th century fine-bookmakers. But he’s the standard, the rule, and what a stringent rule it is. So stringent that it might be riding up the industry’s behind a bit. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the fine press movement was kicked off by someone else… Someone less ideologically wince-worthy, maybe.

These thoughts occurred to me while I was reading Tom Taylor’s ‘We Can’t Just Stop’ article on bookmaking. I hadn’t read an open declaration and discussion of the fine press industry’s relative obscurity in the overcrowded publishing industry before, so that was fairly enlightening. Why bother creating books using the press, Taylor asks, if the process is expensive, toilsome, and rendered relatively obsolete by a century’s worth of bookmaking technology? His conclusion, interestingly, did not involve any blind reverence of history or self-assured mustache-twirling at the lazy, new-fangled technologies of the gluttonous masses. Taylor understands (with a refreshing amount of both self-reflection and good cheer) that straddling the pompous high-horse of the past does nothing to negate modern bookmaking’s swiftness, proliferation, success, and ease of use. Mass manufacture does not a villain make.

Instead, Taylor returns to his art because of its intimacy, its freedom, its handiwork, its community. Everything that a small-market, high-expertise art form provides. He revels in the creativity bloomed of restriction, because it’s the spirit that counts. And I agree, as an aspiring art major staring down a road of almost certain financial struggle and piddling formal recognition must agree. And here is where Morris most grates on me… His strident promotion of historical techniques over the siren’s call of industry appears to be entirely missing the point — and doing so with an annoying fastidiousness. Alright, so his ideal of the content master craftsman is admirable (if unrealistic). But would he rather a craftsman put great pride and personal character into his or her work — or would he rather them adhere to the strictest of typographical, aesthetic, and material restrictions? I admire his desire for the individual masterpiece, sure. But picking and choosing between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ materials, compositions, or artworks — it seems like its setting immense and arbitrary restrictions on the entire field, and Morris was only just laying down said field’s cornerstone at this point. Experimentation certainly wasn’t on his lengthy and bullet-pointed agenda.

See, just one example and I’ll shut up. Take The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the 1985 edition illustrated by Barry Moser. It’s got the golden-mean margins, the roomy, light roman text, the luscious full leather binding, the wood engravings. Morris stuff. But it’s huge. There are people on my dorm floor that are thinner than that damn thing. So, most likely to cut cost, Moser decided to use factory-manufactured paper. High quality, of course — thick and durable — but a book reader can tell at a glance that the book isn’t handmade from spine to fore-edge. An experienced book-maker might even judge it for that. And according to Morris — in so many words — this slip in unspoken book protocol is unacceptable.

It’s a great book. I’m pretty sure no-one’s judging. And I think most of the book-making industry is perfectly willing to ignore and forgive Morris’s eccentricities. But the idea that this craft elitism still lurks over the field like a bad smell makes me want to kick cats.

 

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