The Book Beautiful at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, by various
Epstein & John wood engraving.
Book designs and typography by William Morris and his Art + Craft movement peers are to be celebrated in a new show at Ditchling Museum in East Sussex.
The Book Beautiful: William Morris, Hilary Pepler and the Private Press Story show marks the centenary of the St Dominic’s Press, founded in Ditchling in 1916, and examines the English private press movement in the late 19th and early 20th Century.
St Dominic’s Press went on to publish works including illustrations by David Jones, Gwen Raverat and Eric Gill,and calligraphy by Edward Johnston. St Dominic’s Press was founded by Hilary Pepler, and was heavily influenced by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press and T J Cobden Sanderson and Emery Walker’s Doves Press, whose metal type was exhumed from the river Thames in 2014, and digitised by Robert Green. Alongside book printing, the press also produced designs for beer logos, posters and other ephemera.
St Dominic’s Press focused on three main areas – to promote the printed word through literary, religious and philosophical commentaries, to function as a jobbing press to print for the village, and to preserve craft knowledge.
The Book Beautiful: William Morris, Hilary Pepler and the Private Press Story runs from 17 September 2016 – 16 April 2017 at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, Lodge Hill Lane, Ditchling, Hassocks, East Sussex BN6 8SP

