Golden, Troy and Chaucer: The Kelmscott Press Typefaces

Golden, Troy and a printer's ambition

The Victoria and Albert Museum records that Morris carefully designed the press's bespoke typefaces, first Golden and then Troy, as well as the initial letters, borders, ornaments, frames for illustrations, title pages and printer's marks that gave Kelmscott books their look. The typefaces were not bought from a type foundry. They were part of a single design programme that Morris controlled from the letterforms outward.

The press itself was set up in 1891, in a building a minute's walk from Morris's home in Hammersmith, as the V&A describes it. Over the five years until his death in 1896, Morris published 66 titles. That is a small list by commercial standards, and it was meant to be: the books were made slowly and deliberately, with the type as their foundation.

For the wider story of the press, its books and its people, see the Kelmscott Press in full. The rest of this page stays close to the typefaces themselves and to what the evidence can and cannot support.

Where the impulse came from

The road to Golden and Troy began long before the press did. According to the V&A, it was the illuminated manuscripts Morris had seen in Canterbury Cathedral as a boy that ignited his enthusiasm for historical texts, an enthusiasm fuelled further by visits to the Bodleian Library when he was a student at Oxford. Those early encounters with handwritten and decorated books shaped what he later wanted printed books to look like.

The V&A records that Morris experimented with calligraphy and page decoration before he later set up his own publishing company, the Kelmscott Press. The move from decorating manuscript pages to designing type was a natural one for him: both asked the same question about how letters, ornament and text should sit together. A closer look at Morris's calligraphy traces that earlier practice in detail.

The press building itself was close at hand. The V&A places it a minute's walk from Morris's home in Hammersmith, so the workshop and the design decisions inside it were part of his daily life from 1891 onward.

The medieval model Morris wanted

The typefaces had a specific historical target. The V&A explains that Morris sought to recreate the rich visual texture he admired in books printed in the second half of the 15th century, the first decades of European printing, when page design still carried habits inherited from manuscripts. Golden and Troy were his attempt to bring that texture into modern type.

The taste behind that target had a name and a history. The V&A notes that Morris was looking for an antidote to, as he saw it, the ugliness of the newly industrial world, and was influenced by the Gothic Revival. That movement, a 19th-century fashion that looked back to medieval forms and patterns, was exemplified by books such as Owen Jones and Noel Humphreys' Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages of 1844.

Morris also stated his aim in his own words. The V&A records that he set out to print books hoping some would, as he put it:

That phrase, quoted by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is the closest supplied statement from Morris himself about what he wanted the books to achieve. It is an aim about beauty rather than a technical brief, but it explains why he went to the length of commissioning new typefaces instead of using stock ones.

How Morris worked as a typographer

The V&A's account makes clear that Morris was extremely particular about everything in the typographic process. He knew the importance of spacing between both letters and lines in getting type to sit well on the page. In practice this meant the typeface design and the page setting were one problem, not two.

The same care extended around the type. The V&A records that Morris had very clear ideas about the use of margins, how illustrations should be integrated with the text, and the right paper. A Kelmscott page was planned as a whole: letterforms, spacing, margins, image and paper chosen together.

One tension runs through this work. The V&A observes that although to modern eyes the Kelmscott type style looks very dense, Morris was committed to balancing his love of medieval style with readability. The darkness of the page was part of the medieval effect he wanted, but it had to remain a page someone could actually read. That balance, between historical texture and use, is the central fact about how these typefaces were meant to work.

What the sources do not tell us

The V&A establishes that Morris designed Golden and Troy, but the supplied record stops there. Several obvious questions have no documented answer in the material behind this page, and it is better to say so than to fill the gaps with guesswork.

The record behind this page does not establish:

• Design or issue dates for the Golden or Troy typefaces themselves.
• A detailed description of the visual characteristics of either typeface.
• Why the typefaces were named Golden and Troy.
• Who cut or cast the Kelmscott typefaces.
• Which specific Kelmscott books best illustrate each typeface.
• Any direct statement by Morris about the typefaces beyond the quoted phrase about books having a definite claim to beauty.

If you meet confident answers to any of these questions elsewhere, treat them as claims needing their own sources. The honest core of the story is Morris's authorship of the typefaces and the design principles around them, both of which the V&A documents clearly.

Typefaces in use: the books that carried them

A documented example of Kelmscott book production is the Golden Legend wood engraving of 1892. The V&A records that it was designed by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, engraved by William Harcourt Hooper, and printed by the Kelmscott Press in England. The object shows the division of labour behind a Kelmscott book: design, engraving and printing were distinct skills, even when Morris had a hand in the first of them.

The illustration side depended on others. The V&A notes that Morris was conscious of his limitations as a figurative artist and relied on other people to design illustrations, with major contributions from Edward Burne-Jones. Morris's own work went into the type, borders, initials and page architecture; the pictures came from collaborators.

The V&A also records that Morris wrote 23 of Kelmscott's books, with the others consisting mainly of either medieval works in translation or contemporary poetry. So the typefaces were set for a list that mixed Morris's own writing with older and newer texts chosen to suit the medieval-looking page. For the most famous of all Kelmscott books, follow the story of the Kelmscott Chaucer on its own page.

A commercial press with a principles problem

A common picture of the Kelmscott Press is of a purely artistic venture, indifferent to money. The V&A's record complicates that. Morris was very focused on making the press commercially viable, because profit earned him the freedom to work in the way he wanted. The beautiful book was also a business that had to pay for itself.

The numbers show how that business worked. According to the V&A, most Kelmscott editions were subscribed in advance, so copies were sold before they were printed. The press's total output for its 66 titles was only 22,068 copies, a figure that underlines how small and controlled the whole operation was.

This matters for the typefaces too. Golden and Troy were expensive choices, bespoke designs for a small list, and they were only possible inside a press that managed its sales carefully. The art and the accounting were parts of the same plan.

Why the typefaces matter

According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the clearly stated principles behind the Kelmscott books' design were influential on later typographers and secured the press a significant place in the history of British book design. That influence rests on the principles, the spacing, margins, integration of image and text, and the type itself, being stated and visible rather than kept private.

In other words, Golden and Troy matter less as isolated letterforms than as the visible centre of a documented design method. Later printers could read what Morris had done and argue with it, adopt it or push past it. The wider story of those followers belongs to the private press movement, covered on the Kelmscott Press page and its related articles.