The Golden Cockerel Press was an English fine press operating between 1920 and 1961.
The Golden Cockerel Press was an English fine press operating between 1920 and 1961.
The private press made handmade limited editions of classic works. The type was hand-set and the books were printed on handmade paper, and sometimes on vellum. A feature of Golden Cockerel books was the original illustrations, usually wood engravings, contributed by artists including Eric Gill, Robert Gibbings, Peter Claude Vaudrey Barker-Mill, John Buckland Wright, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes Miller Parker, David Jones, Mark Severin, Dorothea Braby, Lettice Sandford, Gwenda Morgan, Mary Elizabeth Groom and Eric Ravilious.
The Golden Cockerel Press was founded by Harold (Hal) Midgley Taylor (1893–1925) in 1920 and was first in Waltham St Lawrence in Berkshire where he had unsuccessfully tried fruit farming. Taylor bought an army surplus hut and assembled it in Waltham St Lawrence as a combined workshop and living quarters. The Press was set up as a cooperative with four partners, Hal Taylor, Barbara Blackburn, Pran Pyper, and Ethelwynne (Gay) Stewart McDowall. In April 1920 Hal Taylor and Gay McDowall had married. The four initially lived at Taylor's mother's house in Beaconsfield and cycled daily to the hut in Waltham St Lawrence. It was Taylor who persuaded his family trust to provide most of the capital (approximately £2,800) for printing presses et al.
Their first prospectus [1] proclaimed: "This press is a co-operative society for the printing and publishing of books. It is co-operative in the strictest sense. Its members are their own craftsmen, and will produce their books themselves in their own communal workshops without recourse to paid and irresponsible labour". Their first publications were The Voices, a literary review, and Adam & Eve & Pinch Me, short stories by a new author, A. E. Coppard, which was a critical success and sold well. Unfortunately the mood of idealism of the first prospectus did not last long. Proof-reading, for example, had been poor, which upset the authors. [2] By summer 1921 Blackburn and Pyper had left and the co-operative became a more conventional private press when Frank Young, Albert Cooper and Harry Gibbs were employed. [2] In 1923 the press published The Wedding Songs of Spenser with colour wood engravings by Ethelbert White, the first illustrated book from the press and a foretaste of editions to come.
When Hal Taylor suffered a recurrent bout of tuberculosis, Coppard took charge as a temporary manager. But then with Taylor's continued decline the business was put up for sale, early in 1924.
Robert Gibbings was working on wood engravings for The Lives of Gallant Ladies at the time the press was put up for sale, and, to secure publication of this work, he sought a loan from a friend, Hubert Pike, a director of Bentley Motors, to buy the press. [4] He took over in February 1924, paying £850 for the huts housing the business, the plant and goodwill. For the partially completed Gallant Ladies a further sum of £200 was paid. He also leased the house and land for £40 per annum. Gallant Ladies sold well with receipts of over £1,800, and saw the start of a golden period for the press. [2]
The printing staff – Frank Young, Albert Cooper and Harry Gibbs – were skilled and capable of very fine work. [5] Moira Gibbings helped her husband in the business, and Gibbings kept close links with Coppard. Gibbings knew all the leading wood engravers of the day (he was a founder member and leading light of the Society of Wood Engravers [6] ) and a number of authors, which enabled him to publish modern texts as well as classic ones.
The first book for which Gibbings was entirely responsible was Moral Maxims by Rochefoucault (1924). Eric Gill was brought into the fold when he quarrelled with Hilary Pepler over the publication of Enid Clay's Sonnets and Verses (1925) and transferred the book to Gibbings. In 1925 he went on to commission engravings from John Nash, Noel Rooke, David Jones, John Farleigh and Mabel Annesley among others. [4]
Gibbings published some 71 titles at the press and printed a number of books for others. The size of a run was normally between 250 and 750, and the books were mostly bound in leather by bookbinders Sangorski & Sutcliffe. The major titles were the four volume Canterbury Tales (1929 to 1931) and the Four Gospels (1931), both illustrated by Gill. Gibbings printed 15 copies of the Canterbury Tales on vellum, and 12 copies of the Four Gospels. Printing the Canterbury Tales dominated work at the press for two and a half years, and relatively few other books were printed during that period. However, the book was a considerable critical and financial success and grossed £14,000. [2]
1931 saw the first appearance of the Golden Cockerel typeface, designed especially for the press by Gill. Its first use was in A. E. Coppard 's The Hundredth Story. [7] [8] [9] [10]
The illustrations in some Golden Cockerel titles, although tame by modern standards, were considered risqué for the time and necessitated the press taking precautionary measures against possible prosecutions for obscenity or provocation, such as disguising the names of translators and illustrators. Gallant Ladies was mild in comparison with the Song of Songs (1925) and Procreant Hymn (1926), both illustrated fairly explicitly by Gill. The main defence of the press was that it was a private press, not a bookseller.
Sales were strong during most of this period. Gibbings had established links with a number of booksellers, notably Bumpus in London, and negotiated a very favourable deal with Random House. He bought out Pike with finance from another Irish friend, Mary Wiggin, and later bought her out, borrowing the money from Barclays Bank.
In the early 1930s, however, the business climate changed, and, as American sales faltered, the press struggled on as the depression became more severe. The press became moribund and Gibbings eventually sold up in 1933. The last book that he produced was Lord Adrian by Lord Dunsany (1933), illustrated with his own wood engravings.
The press was taken over by Christopher Sandford, Owen Rutter, and Francis J. Newbery. They paid £1,050 for the business. Gibbings had been in negotiations with Sandford for some time, and had introduced Rutter to him. Newbery was the manager of the Chiswick Press, where production was to be moved. The Golden Cockerel Press ceased to be a private press at this point, and became a publishing house. Sandford worked long hours on management, editing and design. Rutter solicited new books and edited some of them. Newbery's role as the printer was to oversee the production work at the Chiswick Press.
The first book published under the new regime was The House with the Apricot (1933) by H. E. Bates. It featured wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker and had been planned by Gibbings. The first major book of the new regime was The Glory of Life (1934) by Llewelyn Powys, a large quarto with wood engravings by Gibbings.
The partners lost money on most of the books that they published, a fact that they had recognised when they bought the press. They were looking to the long term, and tried a number of strategies to strengthen their position, including offering to buy the Gregynog Press so that they could close it down and reduce the competition. The partners had to advance money from their private accounts to keep the press solvent. There had been tension between the three for some time [11] and Anthony Sandford replaced Newbery as a partner. He had a much more commercial approach than his brother Christopher and Rutter, and expected a return on his investment. The press started to produce unlimited editions aimed at the Christmas market, but these too failed in terms of commercial success. Rutter wrote to Christopher Sandford: "We are publishing edition after edition of which more than half remains as stock". [2] Anthony Sandford left as a partner in 1938.
In spite of all the problems caused by the advent of the Second World War there was one huge benefit for the press. People wanted books to read and by 1943 most of the Golden Cockerel stock, a growing liability, had been sold. In 1944 Rutter died but Sandford decided to carry on on his own; he had no financial need to seek a new partner, since the Chiswick Press, in which he had been a major shareholder, had been sold.
Sandford introduced colour illustrations, [12] anathema to private press purists, and other means of reproducing illustrations instead of using original wood engravings – lithography and colour collotype.
Some 120 works were published during the Sandford era. One favourite illustrator was John Buckland Wright, another Clifford Webb, from whom he commissioned wood engravings for eight books. [13] Sandford also commissioned Lettice Sandford, his wife, and artist Dorothea Braby, to work on multiple books produced by the press.
In 1959 Sandford, for whom the financial pressures of keeping the press going had become too much, sold the publishing business to Thomas Yoseloff, an American publisher and at the time director of University of Pennsylvania Press. Yoseloff completed the publication of two titles in 1960 that had been previously commissioned by Sandford, a translation by David Gwyn Williams of the poem "In Defence of Woman" (O Blaid Y Gwragedd) by the 16th century Welsh poet William Cynwal, illustrated by John Petts, and Poems and Sonnets of Shakespeare , edited by Gwyn Jones and illustrated by Buckland Wright. The following year, two more titles were issued under Yoseloff's direction, Folk Tales and Fairy Stories from India by Sudhin Ghose, and Moncrif's Cats, a translation by Reginald Bretnor of the 18th century French writer François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif 's 1727 work, Histoire des chats.
These were to be the last two Golden Cockerel Press titles to be published, however, as the continuation of the business soon proved impractical. By the end of 1961 Yoseloff wound up operations, as the resources and fine bookcraft skills necessary for production of Golden Cockerel titles had become too difficult and costly to obtain. [1]
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Gill as "the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a letter-cutter and type designer of genius", he is also a figure of considerable controversy following revelations of his sexual abuse of two of his daughters.
Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat, was an English wood engraver who was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Her memoir Period Piece was published in 1952.
Alfred Edgar Coppard was an English author, noted for his poetry and short stories.
The Kelmscott Press, founded by William Morris and Emery Walker, published 53 books in 66 volumes between 1891 and 1898. Each book was designed and ornamented by Morris and printed by hand in limited editions of around 300. Many books were illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones. Kelmscott Press books sought to replicate the style of 15th-century printing and were part of the Gothic revival movement. Kelmscott Press started the contemporary fine press movement, which focuses on the craft and design of bookmaking, often using hand presses. While their most famous books are richly decorated, most Kelmscott Press books did not have elaborate decoration, but were published simply.
Perpetua is a serif typeface that was designed by the English sculptor and stonemason Eric Gill for the British Monotype Corporation. Perpetua was commissioned at the request of Stanley Morison, an influential historian of printing and adviser to Monotype around 1925, when Gill's reputation as a leading artist-craftsman was high. Perpetua was intended as a crisp, contemporary design that did not follow any specific historic model, with a structure influenced by Gill's experience of carving lettering for monuments and memorials. Perpetua is commonly used for covers and headings and also sometimes for body text and has been particularly popular in fine book printing. Perpetua was released with characters for the Greek alphabet and a matching set of titling capitals for headings.
Christopher Sandford (1902–1983) of Eye Manor, Herefordshire, was a book designer, proprietor of the Golden Cockerel Press, a founding director of the Folio Society, and husband of the wood engraver and pioneer Corn dolly revivalist, Lettice Sandford, née Mackintosh Rate. During the war he organised preparations for underground resistance from Eye Manor in the event of a Nazi invasion.
Lettice Sandford was a draftsman, wood-engraver, pioneer corn dolly revivalist and watercolourist of her beloved Herefordshire. She was a daughter of Lachlan Mackintosh Rate of Milton Court, Surrey, a director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, the central bank of the Ottoman Empire, and wife of Christopher Sandford of Eye Manor, Herefordshire, proprietor of the Golden Cockerel Press, for which she provided wood-engravings. She was the mother of playwright Jeremy Sandford.
Alan Reynolds Stone, CBE, RDI was an English wood engraver, engraver, designer, typographer and painter.
Robert John Gibbings was an Irish artist and author who was most noted for his work as a wood engraver and sculptor, and for his books on travel and natural history. Along with Noel Rooke he was one of the founder members of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1920, and was a major influence in the revival of wood engraving in the twentieth century.
Mark Fernand Severin was a Belgian artist and graphic designer who lived in England for most of his life.
David John Chambers is an English bibliographer, printing historian, printer and book-collector. Throughout a career in insurance, latterly as a non-marine underwriter for AS Harrison Syndicate 56 at Lloyd's of London, and more recently in retirement, Chambers has studied books and ephemera relating to printing, typography, book-illustration, private presses, the book-arts, English art and literature, and has published books and articles on a wide range of related subjects. Since 1979 he has edited, or co-edited, The Private Library, the quarterly journal of the Private Libraries Association, a bibliophile society of which he has been Chairman since the 1970s, and a Council member from the late 1950s.
Noel Rooke (1881–1953) was a British wood-engraver and artist. His ideas and teaching made a major contribution to the revival of British wood-engraving in the twentieth century.
Blair Rowlands Hughes-Stanton was a major figure in the English wood-engraving revival in the twentieth century. He was the son of the artist Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton. He exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers, but was more in sympathy with the philosophy of the English Wood Engraving Society, of which he was a founding member in 1925. He co-directed the Gregynog Press from 1930 to 1933 with his wife, Gertrude Hermes.
Ethelbert White was an English artist and wood engraver. He was an early member of the Society of Wood Engravers and a founding member of the English Wood Engraving Society in 1925. He also worked in oils and water colour. He was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy.
Ralph John Beedham (1879–1975) was a British wood-engraver. He occupies a unique position in the history of twentieth-century wood-engraving because, being a formschneider, he was probably the last person in Britain to serve an apprenticeship as a professional reproductive wood-engraver.
Hester Margaret Sainsbury (1890-1967) was a British artist, dancer, poet and illustrator.
Gwenda Morgan was a British wood engraver. She lived in the town of Petworth in West Sussex.
Dorothea Braby was a British artist. Although she had a long career as a freelance designer producing work for several well-known companies, Braby is best known for the book illustrations she created, particularly those for the Golden Cockerel Press.
Gay Taylor was an English writer and co-founder, with Harold (Hal) Midgely Taylor, of the Golden Cockerel Press.
In typography, a fat face letterform is a serif typeface or piece of lettering in the Didone or modern style with an extremely bold design. Fat face typefaces appeared in London around 1805–1810 and became widely popular; John Lewis describes the fat face as "the first real display typeface."
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