With books now on pads and pods, this might be a moot point. But before designed book jackets, book covers were the primary illustrative and typographical surface of a book. We’d save a lot of trees if book jackets were no longer used. But then again, we will save even more trees once everything is digital and paper is a quaint reminder of more primitive communications.
Anyway, enough of my speculative blather. I assure you that paper is here to stay (for a while) and it’s the illustrated cloth-over-boards cover that’s virtually lost to another time and place. Nonetheless, Arts and Crafts Book Covers by Malcolm Haslam (Richard Denis, London) recalls the exquisite “stamped” cover designs of the late-19th-century Arts and Crafts movement.
Haslam is a leading scholar of the period, and his detailed account of the movement, its designers and their penchant for decorated covers (from around 1860) is one of the most inclusive I’ve read. The photographs of the covers below reveal how this an essential document of a fertile creative period.
Designed by A.A. Turbayne, 1895
Designed by Fred Mason, 1895
Designed by Gleeson White, 1897
Designed by Selwyn Image, 1899
Designed by Laurence Housman, 1899
Designed by Paul Woodroffe, 1908
The post The Daily Heller: What the Best-Dressed Books Wore Before Jackets appeared first on PRINT Magazine.