The art prospers while the trade declines. By all rights, the trade should have died off long ago, when handmade paper ceased to be a staple commodity, when printers decided that machines could supply a better product at a lower price and in greater quantity. Nineteenth-century printers preferred machine-made paper because it was cheap, readily available, and absolutely uniform in weight, size, and texture�traits highly valued at a time when manufacturers were adopting industrial techniques to increase production, improve quality control, and obtain the lustrous finish then in vogue. As far as printers were concerned, hand papermaking was an obsolete technology, employing inefficient methods with inferior results.   In England, a few self-reliant craftsmen still tried to make a living at the vat, even after they lost their regular customers in the printing trade. They served a different clientele, willing to pay handsomely for traditional ledger, writing, and currency grades with watermarks and other features deemed beyond the imitative powers of the machine. They survived the Industrial Revolution by avoiding competition, carving out a small but secure niche in the market where they could wait and hope for better times.   Indeed, they regained some of their lost prestige at the turn of the century, when the Arts and Crafts Movement championed the virtues of hand craftsmanship in papermaking along with other arts of the book, such as calligraphy, illustration, printing, and binding. Private presses and a few commercial publishers introduced a new aesthetic of book design that repudiated mass-production and resisted the trend towards uniformity and standardization. The vat trade began to grow again to meet an increasing demand for products with character, distinction, and vitality. Industrialization did not kill off the papermaking craft, but drove it into economic exile, where it labored in obscurity for a while before it returned to favor during the revival of fine printing, reaching a peak of prosperity in the 1920s, and then declining again after the Second World War.   The Oxford University Press vigorously expanded its fine printing business during this halcyon period. The Press already had excellent printing facilities, skilled workers, loyal customers, and a solid reputation for scrupulous workmanship and impeccable design. Appointed Printer to the University in 1925, John de Monins Johnson recognized the value of these assets, developed their potential, and used them to tap this promising new market for deluxe editions. He sought the patronage of private clients, solicited the business of fashionable publishers, and engaged the services of expert typographers�such as the illustrious Bruce Rogers, who designed some of his most important and influential books while working at Oxford.   But Johnson realized that even the most inspired designs could not compensate for inferior materials. His predecessors occasionally employed handmade paper for limited editions but did not seem overly concerned about its appearance or printability. Johnson insisted on higher standards of production, seeking subtle nuances of color, weight, and texture to achieve a wide variety of typographical effects in Oxford imprints. He did not hesitate to order custom "makings" when his or his associates' designs called for special features not available in the regular course of trade. He bought handmade and mould-made printing grades of superb quality from the most respected firms in Europe, including nearly all of the vat mills in England. His successors also liked to use top-quality materials in their books, especially when they were not footing the bill.   The printing department regarded its store of fine papers as one of its most precious possessions. The pressmen handled their supplies gingerly, knowing that they would be held strictly accountable for the amount they consumed. They always returned the surplus sheets they had on hand after completing a book, for even those few remaining sheets might be valuable if part of the book had to be reprinted, or if the remnants could be employed elsewhere in pamphlets or broadsides�thus sparing the Press the bother and expense of shopping for smaller quantities. At one point the warehouse contained several surplus papers belonging to the Nonesuch Press, which consented to sell an "oddment" now and then for "odd jobbing work." With the leftovers, the Press also stored inferior or retree sheets that had been culled out of a shipment so they could be used in another job. Some shipments may have never been used at all because a client suddenly changed the terms of a commission or canceled it entirely.   Over the years, the warehouse accumulated an impressive collection of vintage handmade and mould-made papers in pristine condition, vigilantly preserved until 1986, when the Press was phasing out its letterpress facilities and reallocated the warehouse space for other purposes. The printing equipment was dispersed, but the paper collection was kept together and eventually came into the possession of the Whittington Press, which used some of the larger quantities in its own publications. But some of the smaller lots sufficed for little more than job printing, though they were obviously of high quality and of historical significance; they deserved to be preserved in a more accessible form than the occasional pamphlet, broadside, or poster. It was decided, therefore, to publish a complete historical account of the collection, accompanied with forty original specimens, to show the physical characteristics and the identifying features of fine papers used at Oxford between 1900 and 1970.   This collection can serve as a bench-mark standard for the identification and comparison of different papers, like a sample book, though this one covers a longer period than most, and contains full sheets or large portions of sheets instead of fragments. Better still, the University Press has preserved in its archives a number of job dockets, ledgers, and inventories that can tell when these papers were ordered, where they were made, how much they cost, and how they were used. The archives contain not only technical data but also business correspondence, revealing how Oxford printers dealt with their customers and suppliers, why they chose certain types of paper, and how they expected them to perform. These documents explain both the form and function of the specimens in the Whittington collection; they provide the means to describe paper and to understand the part it played in the design and manufacture of the finished product, the books printed at the Oxford University Press.   Of course, the books themselves are the best source of information about book production. They can corroborate the records of the Press, supplement them, or substitute for them if a paper cannot be documented but can be identified in Oxford imprints. With these original samples, we can approach the history of fine printing at Oxford from a new direction, starting with the basic ingredient of book production. We can see what it looked like when it first arrived at the Press and what became of it after it had been printed, folded, and bound. We can learn about presswork, imposition, and layout by comparing the blank sheet with the printed image. We can assess the economics of fine printing by contrasting the cost and quality of different papers with the price and pretensions of the books that had been printed on them.   Disparities in value can be instructive. The Press chose disproportionately cheaper paper when it had to cope with technical constraints or frugal publishers, and selected more expensive varieties when it could count on institutional subsidies or the largesse of wealthy clients. In every case, we can rank these books in a hierarchy of handmade, mould-made, and machine-made paper�a fairly reliable scale of quality by which we can reckon how much publishers invested in their books and where they decided to market them, whether they were trying to reach serious collectors or less extravagant admirers of good typography. Handmade paper stood at the top of the scale, far above the rest in price and prestige, yet it was bought and sold like a staple commodity until the Second World War, when the last vat mills began to disappear. At that time, the best known manufacturer of handmade printing grades was the Batchelor Mill, which filled special orders for important clients, like the University Press, while also carrying a line of stock papers for sale at standard prices to the trade.   Joseph Batchelor & Sons operated the Ford Mill in the village of Little Chart, near Ashford, Kent, not far from Maidstone, where the celebrated Whatman and J. Barcham Green papers were made. The Batchelors bought this modest, two-vat mill in 1877, after several previous occupants had tried and failed to make a living in the manufacture of writing, ledger, and cartridge grades. Better financed and more resourceful than their predecessors, the new owners doubled their capacity within thirty years, adding two more vats, and successfully introduced a line of fine printing papers in a highly competitive market dominated by larger mills. After Joseph Batchelor died, one of his sons oversaw production on-site, while leaving the management of the firm's business affairs to the London wholesale stationers Charles Morgan & Company. The Batchelors owed much of their prosperity to the patronage of William Morris, who commissioned them to make special papers for the Kelmscott Press and gave them permission to sell commercial versions of those papers using the Kelmscott name.   With his approval, the Batchelors vigorously advertised their best-selling brands, Crown & Sceptre and Hammer & Anvil, both bearing watermarks said to have been designed by Morris. This attribution may be based more on hearsay and wishful thinking than on factual evidence, but that does not diminish the mystique of these "Kelmscott" papers. They conveyed not just the spirit but the actual substance of Morris's accomplishments in comparatively accessible publications such as the Fortune Press edition of Plato's Symposium (1924), the Fleuron edition of Milton's Paradise Regained (1924), the Golden Cockerel edition of Samson and Delilah (1925), and Douglas Cleverdon's edition of The Beaux Stratagem (1929).    The Batchelors exported their Kelmscott products to America, where the most prominent distributor of fine papers in their day, the Japan Paper Company, sold Crown & Sceptre measuring 15 by 20 inches at $30 a ream and Hammer & Anvil measuring 17 by 23 inches at $40 to $45 a ream. The Yale University Press bought the larger size for the Bartlett and Pollard Census of Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto (1916), perhaps paying a premium price but with the assurance of selling some copies on the collectors' market. For American collectors of Kelmscott editions, Thomas B. Mosher produced a credible facsimile of Rossetti's Hand & Soul, duplicating Morris's borders, initials, paper, and typography in nearly every detail. Mosher also pilfered Morris's writing for his line of elegantly printed pirated editions, a lucrative business in the absence of adequate copyright legislation. The Hammer & Anvil in his Hand & Soul (1899) was perhaps the only legitimate Kelmscott ingredient he could honestly obtain.  

The Oxford University Press ordered many different Batchelor papers for books commissioned by its more affluent and discerning clients. Profits of a successful construction firm paid for a special weight of Crown & Sceptre in a biographical tribute to the company's founder, Robert McAlpine (1925). Oxford employed an unusual Kelmscott paper watermarked with oak sprigs and acorns to print Russell George Alexander's Engraved Work of F. L. Griggs for the Shakespeare Head Press in 1928. Batchelor paper took pride of place in the specials of the Cresset Press Palace of Pleasure (1929) and in the specials of the R. H. Horne's Orion, chosen by the First Edition Club as one of the fifty best printed books of 1928. Many of the books printed for the Roxburghe Club were on Batchelor papers, either the standard letterpress grades, such as Hammer & Anvil and Little Chart, or custom-made parchment substitute papers suitable for collotype reproductions of illuminated manuscripts; in the latter category, two of Roxburghe's most splendid publications are The Bestiary (1928) and The Bohun Manuscripts (1936).

 Oxford's dealings with the Ford Mill reached a high point with the Bruce Rogers Lectern Bible, one of the most ambitious and most acclaimed fine printing projects of this century. The Batchelor firm supplied an unwatermarked "Kelmscott Antique" for printing two hundred special copies in an edition of twelve hundred, designed by Rogers, printed by Johnson, and published by Oxford in 1935, the specials at a price of fifty guineas or $265. Rogers and Johnson intended these magnificent folio volumes to be serviceable as well as grand, striving for the ultimate in dignity, simplicity, and legibility. Like a private press, the University Press did not have to meet a publisher's deadline, but could linger over subtle details until all parties concerned were content with the results. Altogether the project lasted five years. Published in the midst of the Depression, the Lectern Bible was a triumph never to be repeated, at least on that scale. The Press bought Batchelor handmades for a few more books, but as yet none have been found dating later than 1937. However, the printers did preserve some of the Lectern Bible paper, which now comprises part of the Whittington collection, and remains in such good condition that it could be used to replicate pages of the original.


The prospects for hand papermaking looked bleak during the Second World War. The proprietors sold the mill in the early 1940s to the Beaverbrook chain of newspapers, publishers of the Daily Express, either because the wartime economy had driven them out of business or because nobody else would take it on when they wanted to retire. The new management closed down the vats, sold the moulds to J. Barcham Green, and converted the mill to the manufacture of stereo flong, paper moulds for casting the curved stereotype plates used on rotary presses. The Daily Express was seeking a domestic source of supply, having relied on imports of German flong until the War and having lost its reserves during the London blitz. In 1972 the Wood Flong Corporation of Hoosick Falls, New York, bought a half-interest in the firm with the intention of modernizing its manufacturing methods and sales techniques. Sales of stereo flong declined, however, when newspapers discarded or converted their letterpress equipment upon the advent of computer composition and other advances in printing technology. In 1982 the Wood Flong Corporation sold its half-interest back to the Daily Express, which closed the mill, dismantled the equipment, and disposed of the property. Three beaters were sold to Barcham Green in 1986. What happened to the rest of the equipment and what became of the mill buildings is unknown.  

The mill is gone, but its papers have remained, easily identifiable in books and occasionally obtainable in sheets, sold singly in artist's supply stores or stocked in quantity at a few private presses. One of the earliest papers in the Whittington collection is an antique laid, 15 by 21 inches, 112 grams per square meter, watermarked with an otter on two corners of the sheet. The watermark alludes to the "Otter" Greek type designed by the incunabulist and historian of Greek typography Robert Proctor. This is a Batchelor product worth considering here because it is closely related to the Kelmscott papers and helps explain why one of the original Kelmscott papers was revived for use at Oxford.  

Proctor had prepared a font of Otter but had not yet displayed it in book form when he mysteriously disappeared in 1903, while on a walking tour in the Alps. Carrying on where he left off, his executors produced a splendid specimen of the type serving also as a memorial volume, an edition of Aeschylus's Oresteia printed by the Chiswick Press in 1904. The executors�Sydney Cockerell, Emery Walker, and A. W. Pollard�commissioned this specially watermarked Kelmscott paper for the Oresteia to celebrate Proctor's type as well as the typography of William Morris, whom they (and Proctor) revered as the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the founder of the Kelmscott Press. Indeed, Sydney Cockerell was a trustee of the Kelmscott Press; Emery Walker had helped Morris with the technical side of the printing business; and, in his own writings, A. W. Pollard helped to disseminate the ideals of hand craftsmanship and high standards of design exemplified by the Kelmscott publications.  

After finishing the Oresteia, Proctor's trustees planned a second memorial volume in his types, an edition of the Odyssey to be printed at Oxford under the supervision of the University Printer, Horace Hart. Hart was more than glad to oblige as he greatly admired the Proctor font, and hoped that the trustees might give it to the University. In 1906 he began to print the Odyssey in the same format as the Oresteia and on the same Otter paper, no doubt intending to make one volume uniform with the other. He dipped into his supply of Otter to prepare proof sheets for the trustees and kept for his own reference a few copies, which have been preserved in the Press's archives. But Hart did not reckon with the acute typographical sensibilities of the trustees, who insisted on dictating how to handle the Greek type they had placed In his care. After seeing two signatures through the press, Pollard decided that the book had to be printed in a wider format and instructed Hart to discard the sheets already printed and start again with a larger size. The printers then had on hand at least three reams of Otter, which they dutifully returned to the warehouse and carefully preserved until they had to dispose of their historical papers in 1986.  
 After abandoning the Otter paper, Horace Hart started on the Odyssey again with a slightly larger antique laid in January 1907 and completed the edition of 225 copies in 1909.
This larger sheet is a direct descendant of the famous "Flower" paper designed especially for the Kelmscott Press by William Morris in collaboration with Joseph Batchelor in 1890. Morris also ordered two other sizes, one watermarked with a perch, the other with an apple, but all three display the same general characteristics, emulating an early Italian paper Morris had shown Batchelor to explain the effects he wished to achieve. He loaned the papermaker a book from his personal library with a watermark similar to one appearing in the celebrated Jenson Pliny (1476), hoping that this model would provide proper guidance, and possibly a little inspiration. In fact he did succeed in obtaining an extraordinary replica of the incunable papers he admired. Made of linen rags instead of cotton, exceptionally strong, and looking even more antique than the antique laids of its day, the Flower paper made its debut in the first book of the Kelmscott Press, The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891). The first batch was not satisfactory in the opinion of the printers, who requested that future shipments should be better sized and made on larger moulds, producing a sheet measuring 16 by 22 inches, instead of 16 by 11 inches.  
 In 1895 Joseph Batchelor obtained the right to use the Kelmscott name in his publicity, a shrewd promotional ploy, capitalizing on the increasing fame of the Kelmscott Press. Morris granted permission after Batchelor warned him about the danger of unauthorized imitations and promised not to use any of the original watermarks. Batchelor intimated and Morris believed that the Batchelor versions of the Kelmscott papers would help to safeguard the reputation of the originals.
In 1895 Joseph Batchelor obtained the right to use the Kelmscott name in his publicity, a shrewd promotional ploy, capitalizing on the increasing fame of the Kelmscott Press. Morris granted permission after Batchelor warned him about the danger of unauthorized imitations and promised not to use any of the original watermarks. Batchelor intimated and Morris believed that the Batchelor versions of the Kelmscott papers would help to safeguard the reputation of the originals.  
 Morris's types and watermarks were sacrosanct, but they were not set aside or locked away after the Kelmscott Press was closed. Morris's trustees decided to use them in limited editions of his writings, printed in the Kelmscott style for collectors who could not get enough of the original Kelmscotts or could not afford them. The trustees could replicate the master's style in all particulars, save his woodblock initials and ornaments, which they had placed safely out of reach in the British Museum. They commissioned the Chiswick Press to simulate Kelmscott typography, ornaments excepted, in a series of five octavo editions of his lectures, printed on Perch paper with the Golden type. Even the bindings were the same. The lectures were distributed by the Longmans firm, as were large quarto editions of his prose and poetry, issued in a series of eight volumes beginning with A Tale of the House of the Wolfings in 1901. These too were printed at the Chiswick Press with the Golden type but on slightly smaller Flower paper, better proportioned for this format. Longmans declared that this paper was indistinguishable from the original, "being made at the same mill, of the same materials, and from the same moulds, with the Daisy watermark familiar to collectors."

 The trustees allowed the Flower paper to be used in other projects worthy of the Kelmscott name. The Odyssey qualified because it commemorated the scholarly and typographical achievements of a friend and admirer of Morris. Probably the decision to employ Flower for this purpose was made by Sydney Cockerell, acting as trustee both of the Kelmscott Press and of Proctor's types. Hart or Cockerell may have wished to avoid the expense of placing otter watermarks on larger moulds, but wanted to retain the cachet of Kelmscott paper. Flower ranked high enough at Oxford to be mentioned in the 1919 General Catalogue, which announced that the Odyssey had been printed "on Morris paper." Between 1919 and 1925, the University Press offered the Odyssey in America at prices ranging from $33.60 to $47.25. Costing six guineas in England, the Odyssey sold so slowly that seven copies were still on hand when it was remaindered in April 1940.

The Press put aside the Proctor font, deemed too grand and unwieldy for scholarly work, until John Johnson became Printer to the University, and began to think of ways to enhance its reputation for fine printing. Steeped in the classics, he could appreciate this magisterial design and could employ it to show Oxford's prowess in the allied arts of philology and typography. Like Hart, he admired and coveted the types, although they had been neglected for so long that Proctor's trustees were hinting that they would repossess them or, worse, transfer them to Cambridge. Emery Walker proposed that the Press should use them for a New Testament, but the Press's Delegates preferred a shorter text and eventually compromised on the Four Gospels. Johnson printed some trial pages in a sumptuous folio format, very impressive, but not very practical in the opinion of Sydney Cockerell, who believed that the Gospels should appear in quarto. Johnson then decided to make the Gospels uniform with the Odyssey, both printed in medium quarto on the Kelmscott Flower paper, both bound in Kelmscott-style blue boards with linen spine, a design sure to please ardent disciples of William Morris. Once again the Batchelors prepared a quantity of Flower, apparently still using the same moulds, supplying 36 reams at 3 shillings a pound, approximately 6 pence a pound more than their usual price. Four years in the press, printed in an edition of 350 copies, The Four Gospels in the Original Greek appeared with the Clarendon Press imprint in 1932, undoubtedly one of Johnson's most successful fine printing ventures�successful above all in persuading Proctor's trustees to release the types to the Press, though he also had to sweeten the deal with an honorarium of �100.  
 In the heyday of fine printing, the Oxford University Press could afford to indulge the whims of wealthy clients who ordered unusual papers with elaborate watermarks and other special features. Handmades cost five or six times as much as machine-mades, but were still priced low enough that printers regularly employed them in limited editions. The printing trade helped to sustain this highly specialized sector of the papermaking business, by buying its products and by advertising them in books, prospectuses, and catalogues. Only the printing trade could consume large enough quantities to keep several vats at work, a bare minimum in mills designed to run eight or twelve for optimum efficiency. Mills closed down when printers had to economize during the Depression, when inflationary pressures drove up the price of paper after the Second World War, and when patrons of fine printing decided to dispense with more expensive luxuries in favor of the simpler pleasures accessible in bindings, illustration, and typography. When it lost the printing business, the trade in handmade paper came to the end of an era, the end of an artistic renaissance, perhaps, or of an economic reprieve, which expired when papermakers could no longer reconcile the traditional standards of their craft with changes in taste and fluctuations in demand.

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