The Book as a Work of Art: The Cranach Press of Count Harry Kessler (review)

Count Harry Kessler, born in Paris in 1868 of a German-Swiss father and an Irish mother, was educated in France, England, and Germany, and is chiefly remembered in this country for three illustrated books that he had printed for him at the Cranach Press in Weimar. The press itself was named after the street there on which Kessler's house was located.

Work on his German translation of the Eclogues of Virgil, with woodcuts by Maillol, which he had started planning in 1906 and began printing in 1914, was interrupted by the war and not started again until June 1925; it was completed only in April 1926. A French version was also published in 1926, and an English was printed in 1927. The German translation of Hamlet, with woodcuts by Gordon Craig, was published in 1929, the English edition, with six extra cuts, in 1930. The German, English (in Latin), and French editions of the Song of Songs, with wood engravings by Eric Gill, appeared the following year.

Though not himself an artist, Kessler was a man of great taste whose wealth enabled him to employ, on his own terms, artists and printers who worked on these three books (together with a few others, without illustration), all of outstanding merit. The Eclogues was perfectly printed, its only fault perhaps the enormous breadth of its margins. The Hamlet proved to be one of the finest books of the century. The Song of Songs was not so successful, the blacks of the engravings not quite solid and showing through the handmade paper, though much nearer perfect in the specials on Japanese paper. The press was very English in its style, much influenced by Emery Walker, under whose care its Jenson Roman type was cut by Edward Prince. This face was used for the Eclogues and the Song of Songs. Edward Johnston designed an italic, used in the Rilke Duineser Elegien, 1931, and a black-letter, cut in three sizes, used in the Hamlet. Johnston also designed a Greek, of which only a few letters were cut. John Mason was employed at the press, with Harry Gage-Cole, who had been apprenticed at Kelmscott and pressman at Doves. The paper was made in France by Maillol's nephew, Gaspard. Of the artists employed, one was French, the two others English, though Kessler's plans for the future were more broadly based. He had been a wealthy man before the war, but the richness of his lifestyle and the substantial costs involved at the press exhausted his funds, which had been much depleted since the defeat of Germany, and he was forced to close the press in October 1931. When unable to pay Gill for his work on the Song of Songs he had to offer him several dozen ordinary copies and some on vellum in lieu. With the coming of Hitler he had to leave Germany in 1933, and died in exile in France in 1937.

John Dieter Brinks has edited a most extensive survey of the press, with long chapters by himself and other experts on every aspect of its affairs. His opening preface emphasizes Kessler's approach: the spirit of the text; its valeurs (the form it had to take according to its unique spirit); and the details required to effect this. There follow essays on the major books, the types used, the paper, and the bindings. Lindsay Newman's account of the inspiration and printing of the Hamlet is particularly informative, though some of her comments on the woodcuts would have been of more value had they been illustrated. There are notes by two of the printers, written in 1962, going into much detail, including even the method used to...