Saturday, April 26, 2008

K is for Kelmscott

KkelmscottI have long wanted to knit a William Morris design, but have yet to find a pattern. This “K” is my first, embryonic attempt to pay homage to Morris through a knitting pattern, and of course, I’ve done it in Fair Isle (of course, because Fair Isle is my preferred knitting “medium” and of course, because I have more colors of Shetland yarn than any other weight in my stash; they’re my tubes of ink).

kelmscott_coloRather than taking inspiration from one of his many sumptuous designs from natural sources, I’m using this letter as a way to explore Morris’s typographic design ideas. I’m not sure where this is going to lead me, so it’s just a sketch for now. It is based on one of the Kelmscott Press marks (right), which appeared in his own work, Well at the World’s End (1896).

kelmscott_newsnews_frontisKelmscott is the location (on the Thames) of the 15th- century manor house (left) in Oxfordshire that William Morris lived in from 1871 until his death in 1896. It is now a historic house museum and open to the public. The home of the Kelmscott Press was in Hammersmith, but Kelmscott was a center of artistic production and creative energy for the 25 years Morris lived there and hosted many of the literary and artistic luminaries of his day. Morris featured his Kelmscott home as the frontispiece to his Utopian novel, News from Nowhere, 1893. That wood engraving (by C. H. Gere), is pictured above, at right. Morris imagined Kelmscott as a center of craftsmanship where artisans would congregate and produce artistic creations not for money, but for joy.

The text and many images of News from Nowhere have been digitized and made available by the University of Iowa Libraries’ Morris Online Edition.
kelmscott1kelmscott2kelmscott5kelmscott3kelmscott6

kelmsc_rubMorris delved into the world of letterpress printing in 1891, well into his spectacular career, and just five years before his death. He named his press after his home, and it proved to be one of the most successful of his many businesses, and certainly one of his most celebrated accomplishments. The sine qua non of the press was the richly–decorated edition of Chaucer’s works, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones in a series of 87 wood engravings. In addition to printing a number of exquisite books, the Kelmscott Press became known for its typography. Morris and his unofficial partner, Sir Emery Walker, studied the very early typefaces of the fifteenth century, and produced three seminal typefaces: Golden (designed for a re-print of William Caxton’s 1483 edition of The Golden Legend), Troy (named for the Press’s edition of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, also a Caxton re-print), and Chaucer. Several Kelmscott fonts are available in electronic form (see below). Chaucer and Troy are basically the same font, but in different sizes.

jenson_iniORRIS also took great pains to create elaborate initials (usually wood engravings), a demonstration of his interest in medieval craftsmanship. Just as early printers added initials to mimic manuscript initial letters, Morris liked to set off the first letter of the first word of a chapter or verse with a decorated initial. Some of these have been collected and are available electronically. Morris commissioned highly-skilled paper makers to create (by hand, of course) lush, white papers for Kelmscott books. Likewise, he looked all over Europe for the most precisely-hued black ink. [Note: the “M” pictured above is Jenson Initials No. 79 (American Type Foundry Specimen Book, 1912) The type design is based on Morris’s work, which is in turn based on the typography of Nicolas Jenson].

bj_morrisBefore he became a fine press printer, William Morris was intensely productive in textile design. He not only created designs, he taught himself techniques for weaving carpets and upholstery, making embroideries, and most famously, dyeing. Edward Burne-Jones made a cartoon of Morris demonstrating weaving techniques (right) in 1888. It is said that Morris was so intent upon learning the secret of indigo dye (blue was evidently his favorite color) that he immersed himself—literally—in blue dye for two years. He delivered a memorable lecture, “The Art of Dyeing” in Edinburgh in 1889 (text here, courtesy of the Marxist Internet Archive). With all his interest in textile design and fabrication, it seems extraordinary that he never appears to have had any interest in knitting, except as a conveniently evocative verb. I imagine that is because in the late-ninteenth century, knitting was considered a homecraft, something associated not with art but with functionality. Fishermen and fishing communities in Britain produced sweaters; most women learned to knit stockings; but the days of guild-produced, fine knitting were centuries distant and had left little imprint that might attract Morris’s attention. I assume he simply never considered knitting artisanal.

soldierkBecause I wanted to concentrate on Morris’s printing, rather than his wallpaper or upholstery designs, I chose colors that reflected what might appear in print: creamy whites for the beautiful, handmade Kelmscott papers, red ink for the rubrication found throughout the Kelmscott Chaucer, and a dark, almost-black because although Kelmscott black inks were legendary, I try to avoid flat black in wool (I find it deadens other colors around it). Morris wallpapers and chintzes almost always have a much wider range of colors, which I would like to explore further.

I’m considering patterns based on Morris’s “Pimpernel” (left) & “Willow” (right):
pimpernel_morris

willow_morris





Greatly-Condensed Morris Bib

ChaucerFurther reading

troy_spec

Kelmscott Fonts


G_jensonMorris-inspired Fonts
  • Cloister Initials, by Frederic Goudy (FontHaus)
  • Amelia, by Ted Staunton (P22 Type Foundry)
  • Jenson Initials (Dale Guild Type Foundry)—like Morris’s work, these initials were inspired by Nicolas Jenson’s designs—in metal type, not electronic!
  • Jenson, No. 58, also by Ted Staunton (based on Golden Type, in turn based on Jenson’s typography, ca. 1470).
And this gorgeousness:
  • Kelmscott, by Carol Sunday (Twist Collective)

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

J is for Jacquard

jjacquard3Jacquard knitting—by hand‽ (that’s an interrobang, by the way, a new addition to my typographic arsenal, although it doesn’t seem to display properly in Internet Explorer). It’s also a pair of inter-locking, italic J’s (Centaur font, Italic Swash Caps). Centaur is a 20th century font designed by Bruce Rogers, but based on the designs of a famous “J”: Nicolas Jenson, the celebrated 15th-century French typographer active in Venice.


reversejThe point of this little design “problem” was to see if I could come up with a pattern that used the key features of jacquard knitting: reversibility, and stranding. Truly reversible jacquard knitting can only really be done on a machine (humans have but two hands, after all), but stranding does allow the hand knitter to come up with a pretty close approximation of a reversible, knit fabric. That’s actually not completely true: I believe there is a way to use a sort of mosaic technique to produce a reversible, stockinette-like fabric. I just don’t know how to do it.

jjacquardJacquard is named for the jacquard loom, a punchcard- controlled loom that helped automate weaving in the early nineteenth century. Its main feature was its ability to mass-produce—it allowed manufacturers to churn out great quantities of figured fabric (especially, difficult silks) without having to rely on weaving skills their workers may or may not have possessed.

jjacquard1But back to this project: because I couldn’t resist the opportunity, I threw in some Fair Isle attributes: Shetland yarn, gauge of 8 stitches to the inch, colors that “peak” in the center row, corrugated ribbing, knitting in the round with a steek to bridge between rows and color changes, and no more than two colors per row. Since the gauge is 8 stitches per inch, floats only need to be woven in if a color is used less than once in 8 stitches. I designed a pattern repeat that required color changes every 8 stitches or less so that the whole thing would be (in effect) reversible.

jHere’s another look at the “lettered” design, which I call “J Nouveau”, because the design looks very art nouveau to me. In the beginning, we have a J that looks like this (left).

jnouveau
Reversed & repeated, the design looks like this:






Yes, I’m afraid I’ve made another little video documentary:


swatchesI’m planning to combine this with my Fair Isle sampler (it’s more or less the same size) and make a bag. Stay tuned!









jjacquard2On Art Nouveau design
Art Nouveau Fonts


soldierJacquard Loom


Textile Museums

jheadNicolas Jenson



(Before I cut the steek, it worked great as a headband!)