In place of the heavy rule and sullen grot

This article was written during or shortly after the extended essay I wrote for Bordering on the Sublime, Jan and Crispin's Barbarian Press book, a magnificent undertaking, a hand-printed limited edition book celebrating the Curwen Press and their use of decorative borders). (http://www.barbarianpress.com/catalog/ixf-forthcoming.html) Shortly after, I was commissioned to write The Little Book of Typographic Ornament by Laurence King Publishing. I hated the title and everything about Pentagram's inept design so much so that I initially insisted on using a synonym. 

It was not long after the mechanical caster arrived, providing an unprecedented variety of ornamental typographic material, that in the appearance and arrangement of typography, and book design in particular, the use of ornament was damned as ‘a degenerate act’ by Adolf Loos in his influential book, Ornament and Crime, 1908. Concentrations of white space punctuated by a cluster or clusters of close-set, sans serif text became standard practice. And, one hundred years later, surprisingly little has changed.

In the Spring of 1960, more in hope than reality, The Monotype Recorder,1 that formidable journal published by the Monotype Corporation, attempted to rekindle interest in all things decorative, dedicating much of that number to ‘The Grammar of Type Ornament’. Here are the opening words to its optimistic introduction: ‘Typographic puritanismFoxashpress2

… still exercises a firm dictatorship over Continental jobbing style: but in Britain, in recent years, there has been a spirited uprising of the Cavaliers against the Roundheads. An invitation card to a festive occasion no longer has to look as if it were summoning the guest to a lecture on sanitary engineering. The hand of hospitality can now safely wear lace on its wrist; the card can be embellished, and its message functionally framed, by a discreetly decorative border.’ 

Almost half a century later and there are, perhaps, signs that the preponderance of ‘the heavy black rule and the sullen grot’2 is about to give way to something more… interesting? Sans serifs certainly don’t dominate as they once did, but if ‘fitness for purpose’ – that irrepressible typographic slogan – meant anything, it would ensure that all forms of typographic embellishment – decorative rules, borders, and flowers – could not be dismissed as levity, or worse, irrelevant. This article intends to explore the use of such materials, and their rise and fall in the twentieth century. This is not an argument for the return of such material, but simply an examination of its use by designers for whom the utilisation of ornament was as natural then as our rejection of it is today. 

A few definitions 

Pre-digital decorative material takes several forms, and all have, to varying degrees, digital equivalents. Rules, which print a single, uninterrupted straight line, are strips of brass or type-metal. These can be cast or cut to any length without affecting the design. Such rules are available in a variety of thicknesses although the body of a rule was normally not less than 1.5 point, so that rules of less than this width, when set side by side, had some space between them. Multiple rules, where two or more lines of the same or differing widths of printing surface are on the same body, were also common and very popular. 

Rules in which the line is interrupted in a regular fashion, the simplest being a dotted rule, is called an ornamental rule. A border is a repeated decorative design, cast on a single body of any length, exactly like that of the rule. There is, therefore, little if any, difference between an ornamental rule and a border. The wide range of swelled or tapered rules, whose length is fixed by their design, are also described as ornamental rules. The value of the swelled rule as an element of design and as a means of focusing the eye on the vertical centre of a symmetrically arranged page was described by Peggy Lang in Signature No 9, 1938: ‘It signifies hiatus rather than separation or finality. While its weight achieves emphasis, the tapering ends prevent obtrusiveness, and by its own graduation it brings into harmony varying weights of type’. 

Fleurons, or printers’ flowers, are quite different, being individual, decorative units which can be built up into variously shaped areas of decoration. They are, of course, also used to produce borders and so, confusingly, and inaccurately, are sometimes collectively referred to as borders. Flowers tend to be distinctly unimpressive when seen singularly in a specimen book, but the most astonishing range of patterns can result from their imaginative use. Simon Oliver, who became a director at the Curwen Press, extolled the value of designing your own flowers in his book Introduction to Typography (page 111): ‘Proprietary flowers remain a suitable field for a printer’s initiative. He can thus acquire something different from anything a typefounder can offer and for a moderate outlay.’ Although he later adds the caveat that ‘it is no easy undertaking to design a flower complete with corner pieces which can be repeated in a variety of built-up patterns’. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the simplest form of decoration can be achieved by judicious use of ‘regular’ characters available in any fount of type. It was once common to find folios (page numbers) set within brackets, for no other reason than to provide unobtrusive ornamentation on an otherwise spartan page of text. 

The use of rules, including multiple and even ornamental, is, chiefly, just a matter of cutting them to the required length. However, printers’ flowers present a different proposition. Often, their composed, printed appearance is so complex that the individual flowers appear indistinguishable from each other, creating an interlaced composition so ineffable that its construction – where or how it began or ended – is impossible to decipher without having prior practical experience or a detailed knowledge of the specific individual units. This is partly down to the lack of a shared, unambiguous ‘grammar’ that enables objects and actions related to such work to be described, and, in this way, understood. Such a grammar exists but is as rarely used as are printers’ flowers.

The print revival 

During the 1920s, a number of related publications and organisations made a concerted effort to promote the belief that the highest standards in printing generally, and book production in particular, were attainable using machine composition and mechanised printing machines within regular trade working conditions. Key to such success, it was conceded, rested on the ability of a ‘typographer’. The print revival was vigorously supported by Stanley Morison and Beatrice Warde at the Monotype Corporation who provided an historically sanctioned approach to the design of print through the pages of the Monotype Recorder. Other leading influencers were The Fleuron (1923 to 1930) edited first by Oliver Simon and then by Stanley Morison, Francis Meynell’s Nonesuch Press (1923 until the recession of the 1930s) Harold Curwen at the Curwen Press among others. 

It was Meynell‘s Nonesuch Press, dedicated to the production of ‘fine books by machine’ which provided the catalyst for a renewed interest in printers’ flowers. Meynell, a great admirer of American book designer Bruce Rogers, had built up an unrivaled personal collection of printer’ flowers and the versatile way he used them created an interest within the print trade that was fed by the Monotype Corporation which made a range of beautiful material available very cheaply. By the mid-1920s there was hardly a printer in the country who had not bought a few pounds of them from his trade supplier or, if he owned a Monotype caster, obtained matrices and cast them for himself. 

The enthusiastic buying of printers’ flowers during the 1920s, often on a whim and in almost total ignorance of what, exactly, was being bought, was, not surprisingly, short-lived. The problem was that the training of the compositor, if it included the use of flowers at all, was rarely more than cursory. So the compositor needed time to experiment in order to gain an understanding of these units. But a compositor with time to experiment was, too often, considered by his overseer to be under-employed. (And so it always was.) Here is a quote from 1771, by a sceptical Philip Luckombe (printer and print historian) during one of several ornamental resurgents, this time influenced by the optimistic frivolity of the Rococo period and given florid form by Fournier. ‘It is to be feared that the head-pieces, Facs., and tail-pieces of Flowers will not long continue either in England, France or Germany, considering that the contriving and making them up is attended with considerable trouble and loss of time; and as no allowance is made for this, it will not be strange if but few shall be found who will give instances of their fancy’. He was right, of course. By the end of the eighteenth century, flowers, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Neoclassical type and typography of Giambattista Bodoni, were virtually dead. 

For the majority of printers, the hard reality of finding the necessary time to learn the skill required to utilise these units was all but impossible, and the packets of flowers, bought in a flush of enthusiasm, often remained unopened, or, if dissed, left to languish in the bottom cases of the frame. Ignorance also caused poor choices to be made. For example, printers often failed to buy appropriate corner pieces, or they might buy a packet of one unit not realising that some flowers were designed as pairs. If, and when this material was put to use, the care and attention it required was often underestimated. 

It is too easy to suggest that Monotype, and other foundries, could have done more to help the small print office buyer to make a more informed choice and the compositor recognise their commercial application. Monotype Printing Ornaments (Frederic Warde), published in 1928, was a substantial and concerted attempt but ill-conceived. Indeed, the mesmerising complexity of Warde's settings probably persuaded many printers that the use of flowers was not compatible with the efficient running of a commercial print office. 

The Curwen Press 

However, several printing companies proved this was not the case, and one in particular, the Curwen Press, made ornament a key component of its distinctive style. The big advantage this company created for itself was the scope and scale of its output, enabling it to keep a specialist compositor occupied in ornamental work. Composing decorative work from Monotype units was generally described as ‘advanced work’, expertise that needed to be specially developed by someone with an aptitude for such a task. This was generally provided in the composing room by a specialist; a highly skilled craftsman, and at the Curwen Press, where decorative work was so ebulliently employed, this craftsman was Bert E Smith, a compositor at the Press from 1924 to 1964, and one of the very few individual compositors to be ‘mentioned in dispatches’. 3 

According to David Gosden, who worked at Curwen as an Order Clerk, having ‘risen from the ranks’ before serving for many years in the composing room, Bert Smith rarely used specially cast flowers, preferring to use units in stock and in the cases. There was never any pre-planning. Instead, Smith would intuitively set a corner of a job as a trial, and, in so doing discover the possibilities offered by the chosen flowers. If a unit proved unsatisfactory he either chose another unit, turned it, or found some other remedy within the point system. It would, of course, have been possible for Smith to have asked the caster operator to cast a flower ‘off standard‘ if necessary. This was normal practice, for example, small caps might be set with additional width to avoid fiddly inter-character spacing by hand. However, Smith had a particularly undemonstrative personality, and so preferred to find a solution with minimum fuss. 

In such circumstances, it is not surprising that the appearance of Curwen‘s printed material provides what is generally considered to be the perfect symbiosis of word and ornament. Harold Curwen had attended Edward Johnston’s calligraphy classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the working method and conditions – ‘the art of taking trouble’4 – he created at the Curwen Press was strongly influenced by Arts and Crafts ideals. ‘Simplicity of format and intimacy without impertinence’ came to be the hallmark of the work emanating from the Curwen Press.

However, as essential as Harold Curwen was in providing a working environment beneficial to the pursuit of quality, the distinctive Curwen style and manner, so consistently apparent, can be attributed to the typographer and designer, Oliver Simon. Importantly, his presence was also influential in the Curwen Press being increasingly engaged in jobbing (general advertising and graphic design) work, offering a breadth to the work for the Curwen Press and meant that its ‘ideas department’ functioned as what later would be called a graphic design consultancy. By 1930, jobbing work accounted for over half of Curwen’s output. 

The Curwen studio regularly commissioned work from a group of artist-illustrators, aided by Oliver Simon’s uncle, William Rothenstein, who, as Principal of the Royal College of Art, was keen to help his former students by introducing them to his nephew at the Curwen Press. At this time, Simon was commissioning work from, among others, Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious and Barnett Freedman, as well as from Paul Nash, who was a lecturer at the RCA at that time, all of whom designed ornamental material in the form of flowers, decorative borders and pattern papers. The contrasting characteristics associated with Curwen of hedonism and humbleness were certainly due to Simon’s approach to design and typography in particular, but he was aided and abetted to a major degree in this by the decorative work provided by these artist-illustrators. 

Today, the work of the Curwen Press commonly denotes a gentile refinement which, in turn, has come to be associated with an idyllic, if perhaps guileless England between the two World Wars. This, of course, was not how Harold Curwen or Oliver Simon saw it at the time. Whilst on the continent (and strongest in Germany) the impulse for a similar print revival had lead inexorably towards simplification and modernity, the Curwen Press was advocating a less strident, but, in their view, equally ‘adventurous’ route. Simon was well-travelled and closely followed cultural developments in Europe – he was a great admirer of German printing – but he was consciously taking the work of the Curwen Press in a different direction. 

The concept that typography, and the context in which it was placed, should be efficient was never far from Oliver’s mind, it is just that, importantly, he did not consider the non-essential to be, necessarily, superfluous. Decorative content was not used to attract, but quite the opposite, to avoid ‘the designer gesture’ in the arrangement of reading matter. In this sense, decoration neutralised, provided a common ground – an accommodating environment – considered to be conducive to the aims of both author and reader. 

Bert E Smith is significant not only because he was the consummate craftsman, but because the work he did – on a daily basis – rendered the knowledge of the ‘typographer’ irrelevant. Whilst looking at his work today suggests an infinite variety of possibilities, it was secured by the simplest formula known to jobbing typography, albeit one that, by the 1950s, was rarely expressed, ‘Centre it, and, where advisable, put a frame around it’.5 What such a request implies (along with the intelligent use of interlinear spacing, letter-spacing, and choice of faces and sizes) is a total confidence in the skill and aesthetic judgment of the compositor. It should be noted that symmetrical or justified arrangements can, to a large degree, be taught by rote. Ranged left heralded the domination of printed matter by the typographer’. Perhaps what makes type-cast decoration appear so attractive today is the pragmatic discipline given form by combinations of replica cast units. They do not represent anything. Their presence is ostentatious – unnecessary – and it is this sense of luxury that makes it difficult for it to be accepted today. 

This is a pity. Pleasure was an essential ingredient in  Curwen Press work (which, no doubt, was Harold Curwen’s way of fighting the bouts of depression he suffered from time to time) and this has, on occasion, been wrongly equated with a lack of commitment to ‘serious endeavour’. A more egalitarian (classless?) society has learnt that information should be presented without embellishment, regardless of subject or intent, if it is to be trusted or, indeed, taken seriously.  

After Curwen 

The Curwen Press went Into receivership in 1984 and numerous stories have passed into folklore of how individuals managed to smuggle material of little monetary, but huge cultural value; irreplaceable matrices, founts, tools, and equipment, out through toilet windows and the like in order to save it from the scrap-metal merchants. Talking to those involved it is clear that a profound bitterness still pervades the way the vast archive that was Curwen’s store and composition rooms, was simply handed over to an ignorant and disinterested liquidator.

 The extent to which the design world had changed during the Curwen Press’s latter years can be gleaned from the books aimed at the trainee printer published in Britain post 1950s take a distinctly haughty view of decoration. By this time, the general trend, even in Britain was for bookwork to avoid all ‘clutter’ of any sort, although justification for this view was always argued in practical terms, that ornament was inefficient and/or expensive, never in terms of appropriateness, aesthetics, or ideology. The following, taken from H. W. Larken’s Compositor’s Work in Printing 1961, is typical. ‘As a point of commercial adaptation of any layout, it should be appreciated that the addition of a border or a series of ornaments will result in increased time being spent by the compositor. This is especially marked when, for example, the border is assembled from a series of single-unit pieces, requiring considerable dexterity on the part of the craftsman in several stages of his work. Therefore, in instances where the cost of production is an overwhelming consideration, it is seldom practical to use any involved border or decoration, and if some form of ornament is imperative the choice has to be confined to a rule.’6 The schism between print and design, which had been simmering for most of the twentieth century, and irreversibly established by their separation in education.