The book as a work of art : the Cranch Press of Count Harry Kessler

Laubach, Berlin, Williamstown : Triton Verlag, Laubach and Berlin & Williams College, 2005. Second English edition. Quarto, publisher’s gilt decorated red cloth over boards in black paper-covered slipcase, 453 pp., fully illustrated in colour; internally pristine, a fine copy.

The Cranach Press, though located in Germany, was inspired by and became an integral product of the English private press movement. Following advice from Emery Walker, new typefaces were drawn by Edward Johnston and cut by Edward Prince and George Friend; then Harry Gage-Cole was called in as pressman to print the wood-engravings of Gordon Craig, Eric Gill, and Aristide Maillol. Their work is recorded in this profusely illustrated book.

The work, designed by Sabine Golde and John Dieter Brinks, includes essays by John Dreyfus, Anne Hyde Greet, Gunnar Kaldewey, J.D. Brinks, Renate Müller-Krumbach, Lindsay Newman, among others, with extensive documentation and a new and illustrated bibliography of the Cranach Press.