University of Virginia Library

Style and Art

When writing men like Gentile Bellini, William Caxton, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole, William Morris and Thomas De Vinne felt in the mood to exude some particularly hot copy, they hiked for the type-case and worked their energy up into a galley of Good Stuff. They set up the matter as they composed it. Thus we get the words "composing-stick" and "compositor."

In those days the printer was always a man of considerable literary ability. People used to doff their hats when they met him on the street and address "Mr. Printer." And as a follow-up custom, it was only the day before yesterday that folks stopped saying "Mr. Editor."

These early printer-authors had pronounced preferences for different type faces and families, and the adoption or rejection of these various choices segregated all shops into exponents of certain "styles."

Every print-shop now has its particular conception of what constitutes style in typography. No two of offices have identical views on this subject, though all of them are evolving towards an Idea which had its first modern impulse in The Roycroft Shop.

The beauty and adaptability of this Idea found for it considerable favor, and "Roycroft Style" is now a well known phrase in commercial printing circles. But the best printers in the country have been unable to successfully reproduce "Roycroft Style." For "Roycroft Style" is more than a style, it 's an Art—an Art born of Artistic Environment and developed by boys and girls working under conditions which approach the Ideal. At The Roycroft Shop we produce both Art and Artists.

If You Want Printing Done Very De Luxe, Let Us Know Your Needs