The Modern Book
THE editor of the Studio is to be congratulated on having presented in a comely quarto examples of the arts of the printer, illustrator and binder in many countries, with short essays by writers of the several nationalities included. The Studio published a similar survey in 1914 on the eve of the War, and those who remember it will see that the revival of interest in book production was not crushed by the long conflict but continues unabated. The new volume contains a good deal that is fantastic, eccentric, or even grotesque, but in the main it testifies to a marked improvement in the design and printing of the ordinary book, not merely in England and America, but also in Germany, France and elsewhere. Bibliophiles may find pleasure in the products of special presses, but it is far more important that the average publisher should be taking thought for the appearance of his wares and that the average printer should be giving attention to new founts of type and to the decorative effect of the printed page. We are not at all sure, indeed, that the best publishers cannot give points to the private and semi-private presses, whose work tends to be unduly elaborate and to take little account of the reader's needs. William Morris's Kehnscott Gothic has often been criticized—by the plain man—as illegible. The private printer who, as in one or two cases here, gives a solid page of type without a single paragraph to break the mass must be pronounced guilty of a gross error of judgment, for books are meant not only to be looked at but to be read. On the other hand intelligent publishers are more and more inclined to use a good bold type, such as Caslon old-style or Garamond, or Imprint, and to insist on a reasonable abundance of paragraphs—unless they have to deal with an author like Mr. Bernard Shaw whose ideal is an unbroken page with the lines close set so that they dazzle and perplex the eye. Type- designing is a most difficult art, and it cannot be said that any of the new founts is an unqualified success. Mr. Graily Hewitt's " Treyford " fount for the Oxford University Press has been much praised, but it is not elegant and the " y " is to our thinking a misshapen letter. The happiest of the new founts are frankly adaptations of old founts ; even Bodoni's spidery letters, somewhat modified and sobered, are now in fashion once again, and some German designers have gone back to Fust and Schoeffer and the Mazarine Bible for inspiration.
As one turns the pages of this sumptuous volume, one sees each nation's characteristics reappearing in its printed books. The selection of English books is fairly made and is on the whole dignified and businpqRlike. The American books are sometimes excellent, sometimes the reverse ; the average standard of workmanship is assuredly not that of Mr. Bruce Rogers as yet. France is represented by some delicate and graceful work and by a few clever novelties. Germany is seen to advantage ; while some of her printers are remarkable only for a calculated oddity or audacity, most of them are doing admirable work, at once scholarly and attractive. A page from the late Field-Marshal Moltke's memoirs ought to have been reproduced : it is assuredly one of the most beautiful books produced in our time. The Scandinavian and -Italian: books all reach a high level-of good design and sound technique. The most advanced work, not always satisfactory but full of new ideas, is that of Czechoslovakia. Modern printers would do well to keep their eyes on Prague. Even Vienna is less revolutionary in respect of lay-out and decoration than the Czech capital. Book illustration generally is improving because the old woodcut is regaining favour ; nothing else accords so well with a page of type. The popularity of the " jacket," or paper cover of a cloth-bound book, has given the inventive designer a new field for his talents, and the volume rightly includes a number of these ingenious and amusing trifles. As the purpose of a " jacket " is to attract attention to one book among many in a bookseller's window or on a counter, it may well be gay or startling, and some of the examples given certainly deserve these adjectives. We should award the prize for charm and originality to a German cover-design in pale shades of brown, orange and yellow with a ship and palm trees stamped in gold, for The Spanish Island, but it is not quite clear whether this is for a mere " jacket " or for a paper-bound book. The volume deserves careful study by our publishers and printers and indeed by all who care for the externals of a good book.
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