On the one
hand, the Kelmscott Press books, on their own lines, are the finest and
the most harmonious which have ever been produced; on the other, the
book-work turned out in the ordinary way of business by the five or six
leading printers of England and Scotland seems to me, both in technical
qualities and in excellence of taste, the finest in the world, and with
no rival worth mentioning, except in the work of one or two of the best
firms in the United States. Moreover, as far as I can learn, it is only
in Great Britain and America that the form of books is now the subject
of the ceaseless experiment and ingenuity which are the signs of a
period of artistic activity.
As regards book-illustration the same claim may be put forward, though
with a little more hesitation. We have been taught lately, with
insistence, that 'the sixties' marked an epoch in English art, solely
from the black and white work in illustrated books. At that period our
book-pictures are said to have been the best in the world; unfortunately
our book-decoration, whether better or worse than that of other
countries, was almost unmitigatedly bad. In the last quarter of a
century our decorative work has improved in the most striking manner;
our illustrations, if judged merely for their pictorial qualities, have
not advanced. In the eyes of artists the sketches for book-work now
being produced in other countries are probably as good as our own.
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