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Course & Subject Guides

Found Treasures, Spring 2014 @ Pitt Special Collections: Doves Press

This library guide is an overview of the Special Collection's exhibit, "Found Treasures," a selection of works that represent major fine and private presses held by Special Collections.

A Doves Press Binding

Shelley. By Percy Bysshe. The Doves Press, 1914.

More on the Famous Comden-Sanderson Dispute

From The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1879-1922. New York: Macmillan, 1926.

About Doves Press

  • Private press founded in 1901 by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker.
  • Based in Hammersmith, England.
  • Cobden-Sanderson first set up the Doves Bindery in 1893, which bound many of the Kelmscott Press books.
  • Their business ideals were based heavily on the Arts and Crafts Movement.
  • The two partners, along with Sydney Cockerell, created type based on Nicholas Jenson's Roman type (1470's), named the "Doves Type."
  • Books bound in vellum with elaborate and ornate bindings.
  • Their materpiece is a five volume bible completed in 1905.
  • By 1908 the partnership between Cobden and Sanderson diminished. This was due to a disagreement about typeface which resulted in Sanderson throwing the typeface into the Thames in 1916.
     

Example of Doves Type

The Tragedie of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare. Hammersmith: Doves Press, 1913.

Additional Resources