Of Letters

This is an image of a left-over impression from a new printing of Albrecht Dürer's "Of the Just Shaping of Letters" at the Mall Press which succeeded the Doves Press. The Doves Press had been established as a partnership between Emery Walker and T J Cobden-Sanderson in 1901 and followed the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement. However, the partners fell out and Cobden-Sanderson threw most of the type into the Thames at Hammersmith Bridge.

It seems entirely possible that the printer was none other than Bruce Rogers. Rogers, who designed the Centaur typeface, worked with Emery-Walker, and Centaur is based, as was Doves Roman, on the work of Nicolas Jenson.

Doves Roman is austere; its serifs, for example, are almost slabs.

The "Bruce Rogers & American Typography" chapter in John Dreyfus's "Into Print" (1995) states:

"During his first visit to England, Rogers had met Emery Walker, and in 1916 he decided to accept his invitation to join his newly established Mall Press. A few months later, he began to question the wisdom of his choice. 'When I consider the matter calmly,' he wrote, 'it seems a slightly mad undertaking to transplant one's family and to ship some seven hundred or eight hundred pounds of Centaur type to London in the midst of a great war; or to produce one book which will hardly pay anyone concerned. For partnership with Walker, and continuing the traditions of a Kelmscott and Doves Presses doesn't seem much of a prospect at present.’

"After the first two sheets of the book had been printed, the last pressman was called up for war service, and Rogers had to do the presswork on the Press's only book, Dürer's Of the Just Shaping of Letters, himself."