Ashendene Press

St. Francis of Assisi, I fioretti del glorioso poverello di Cristo, printed by the Ashendene Press, 1922.

The Ashendene Press was a small private press founded by St John Hornby (1867–1946). It operated from 1895 to 1915 in Chelsea, and was revived after the war in 1920. The press closed in 1935.[1]

Most Ashendene editions used one of two fonts which were specially cast for the Press: Subiaco, which was based on a fifteenth-century Italian type cast by Sweynheim and Pannartz in Subiaco, Italy, and to a lesser extent Ptolemy.[2] Some Ashendene books, such as that by St. Francis of Assisi shown here, were illustrated with wood-engravings, but the majority were printed solely using type.

The wood engraver William Harcourt Hooper worked for them from about 1896.[3]

References

  1. William S. Peterson, The Kelmscott Press (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 282.
  2. R. O. B., "The Ashendene Press 'Don Quixote,' 1927-28," Huntington Library Quarterly 3 (1945), 321-322.
  3. "Guide to the William Harcourt Hooper Papers". University of Iowa Libraries. Retrieved 4 October 2014.

External links