Imaging: A type history
Artist book
Edition of 50
Digital, letterpress and
offset printed
234 x 144 mm
May 2023
In March 1913 T. J. Cobden-Sanderson walked to Hammersmith Bridge and threw the first load of his Doves typeface into the river. By 1917 he had ‘bequeathed’ its entirety to the Thames. This action resulted from a drawn out dispute with his business partner, Emery Walker. Together at the Doves Press they had created what are commonly regarded as the most beautiful books of the Victorian era. The Doves Type, for years arranged neatly in its case, had been liberated from the shackles of Fine Press book production in a way that can be seen as a direct enactment of F. T. Marinetti’s call for ‘parole in libertà’ (words set free) in his 1912 Futurist manifesto. Marinetti’s cry has influenced the treatment of words and letters among Dadaists, Futurists, Concrete poets and Lettrists for the last hundred years.
'Imaging' presents a typo-visual story of the Doves Type and a celebration of the emancipated letter.
Available at:
Tenderbooks, London Centre for Book Arts and edcat
