The archaic appearance of the Kelmscott Press publications can lend the impression of revivalism in its fundamentalist form. This chapter considers the modern (and partially modern) technologies employed by Morris’s bookmaking venture, ranging from Emery Walker’s method of photographic enlargement in the development of typefaces, to the employment of early nineteenth-century metal presses. The discussion focuses initially on Morris’s broader relationship with technology, including the influence of John Ruskin. As with Ruskin, an initial impression of hostility to all mechanised solutions gives way to qualifications based in the form of energy harnessed, the context of the work, and the relationship with human agency or intelligence. Morris’s account of weaving provides a particularly suggestive basis for rethinking his relationship with technology, and this opens the way for a discussion of two lens-based solutions which he applied to work at the printing press. The first relates to the mediation of the hand by photographic means, most notably Burne-Jones’s hand as designer of the Press’s woodcuts. The second concerns technologies of projection and enlargement, initially employed by Walker at the ‘magic lantern’ lecture that inspired the foundation of the Press, and then in the design of typefaces based on early Venetian models.

Chapter 4 considers the late nineteenth-century aesthetic press as an embodiment of the collaborative process. Drawing from manuscript culture and William Morris’s lectures, this chapter illuminates two integral processes: individuals coming together to form a liberal community and the mechanization of the Kelmscott Press as a joining of art and writing. By positioning the Press within a larger trajectory of Victorian liberal sentiment, this chapter foregrounds that fraternal communitarian conceptions of liberalism can be understood as the same as Morris’s practical socialism. During the 1880s, liberalism and socialism were closely related. Further, by emphasizing Morris’s belief that the production of art brings relief from the vulgarization of society, this chapter asserts that such reform occurs in the communal endeavor of the press as a business partnership, witnessed in the collaborative productions of Edward Burne-Jones and Robert Catterson-Smith, and William Morris and Charles Gere. Morris’s ideal book, thus, serves as an exemplar of lived sociality in the embodiment of the Kelmscott Press: a site that combines work with social pleasure.