At Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton historian Colin Franklin guides us through some of the highlights of five hundred years of printing. Stills show William Morris and his arts and crafts private press known as Kelmscott. Franklin looks at examples of the Kelmscott books including their crowning achievement, the Kelmscott Chaucer. He talks about how they were trying to revive the skills of the fifteenth century such as those displayed by Gutenberg and various Italian printers. Franklin also shows some hand lettered books and considers works from the Daniel Press and a recent example from America with a hand printed copy of Moby Dick (Some of these shots are overlaid with music from Steeleye Span).
In the second half of the programme, we visit the Stanbrook Abbey Press which is housed in a Benedictine nunnery at Callow End in Worcestershire and is carrying on the private press tradition. A nun describes the process in hand making books and we see stages in the process including type-setting by hand and printing.
[Producer: Jim Berrow]
[Directed by Richie Stewart]
PN 8307/80. No credits or captions on the film print.