In March 1913, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson threw the most beautiful typeface in the world off of London’s Hammersmith Bridge to keep it out of the hands of his estranged printing partner. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll explore what would lead a man to destroy the culmination of his life’s work — and what led one modern admirer to try to revive it.
We’ll also scrutinize a housekeeper and puzzle over a slumped child.
Intro:
Gustav Mahler rejected the Berlin Royal Opera because of the shape of his nose.
In 1883, inventor Robert Heath enumerated the virtues of glowing hats.
Sources for our feature on the Doves Press:
Marianne Tidcombe, The Doves Press, 2002.
The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1926.
“The Doves Press” — A Kelmscott Revival,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 1901, BR9.
“The Revival of Printing as an Art,” New York Tribune, Sept. 14, 1901, 11.
“The Doves Press Bible,” Guardian, March 10, 1904.
“The Doves Press,” Athenaeum, Jan. 12, 1907, 54-54.
“The Doves Press,” Athenaeum, June 13, 1908, 729-730.
Dissolution of the partnership, London Gazette, July 27, 1909, 5759.
“Doves Press Type in River: Memoirs of T.C. Sanderson Tell How He Disposed of It,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 1926, 27.
Arthur Millier, “Bookbinding Art Proves Inspiration: Doves Press Exhibit Reveals Devotion to Lofty Ideals,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1933, A2.
Charles B. Russell, “Cobden-Sanderson and the Doves Press,” Prairie Schooner 14:3 (Fall 1940), 180-192.
Carole Cable, “The Printing Types of the Doves Press: Their History and Destruction,” Library Quarterly 44:3 (July 1974), 219-230.
Marcella D. Genz, “The Doves Press [review],” Library Quarterly 74:1 (January 2004), 91-94.
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