Kelmscott Press may have only operated for seven years at the end of the 19th century, but its legacy as a high-water mark in British printing endures.

It was a late career passion project from the pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris, who had grown wary of the decreasing quality of books under the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution. Morris’s goal? Nothing less than crafting “the ideal book,” a thing of old-world quality and definite beauty—though not so much as to “dazzle the eye.”

William Morris and daughter May Morris (center) photographed with the staff at Kelmscott Press. Photo: Historical Picture Archive/Getty Images.

Working out of a West London house on the River Thames (a site today occupied by the William Morris Society), Morris looked back to the introduction of movable type in the middle of the 15th century, considering it the golden era.

Accordingly, every aspect of Kelmscott Press’s books rejected the era’s mass production. Inks were made without chemicals and worked off Medieval formulas. Paper was non-bleached and hand-made in small batches (though the press also released vellum editions). For printing, they used the Albion Press, which dated from the 1820s and was operated by hand. Today, we’d call the approach artisanal.

It was a success, so much so that within a couple of years Morris had hired a handful of staff and acquired two more presses to match public demand. From 1891 to 1898, Kelmscott published 53 books—and an auction at Bonham’s New York on December 17 featured a copy of every one. The sale achieved $690,000 and all of the Kelmscott books were sold.

The work known as the Kelmscott Chaucer. Photo: courtesy Bonham’s.

“Morris was able use the press to collaborate with his design contemporaries and translate what he had learned from his time in decorative arts into intricate, expertly crafted books,” Ian Ehling, the director of fine books and manuscripts, said via email. This collaboration was evident in the auction’s leading lot, the 1896 edition of a Geoffrey Chaucer volume which was illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones.

Known as the Kelmscott Chaucer, it followed four years of preparation and was the last work published before Morris’s death. It was also the most successful: the first round pre-sold before going to print, a popularity that led Morris to purchase a third Albion Press almost solely for the purpose of printing the Kelmscott Chaucer. The lot sold for $114,800 over a high estimate of $90,000.

Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile, a French romance. Photo: courtesy Bonham’s.

The Kelmscott Press books had been assembled by Joseph Mark Van Horn, a serial inventor and entrepreneur, who became a prolific collector of rare books in the 1960s and 1970s, with a particular focus on Morris. After his death in 1983, Van Horn’s fiancée held on to and preserved the collection until her own death in 2023.

Another success was the vellum version of Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile, of which only 15 copies were made. It sold for $21,760.

The Order of Chivalry by Lull Ramon. Photo: courtesy Bonham’s.

Among Van Horn’s collection were numerous Kelmscott Press books that Morris had gifted to friends and in which he left an inscription. This included The Book of Wisdom and Lies, given to Rudyard Kipling, which sold for $7,600, a collection of Percy Shelley poetry given to his sister-in-law, which sold for $20,480, and The Order of Chivalry by Ramon Llull, which sold for $20,480.

While Morris has drawn much of the praise for Kelmscott Press and its legacy, as perhaps shown by the project and his gifting of copies, the artist himself was quick to share the credit. As he wrote in The Ideal Book (1892), the building blocks for a great end product were “the designer of the picture-blocks, the designer of the ornamental blocks, the wood-engraver, and the printer, all of them thoughtful, painstaking artists, and all working in harmonious cooperation for the production of a work of art.”