In 2021 the William Morris Societies of the UK, US, and Canada are celebrating 125 years since the publication of the Kelmscott Chaucer, the crowning glory of Morris’s book printing venture, the Kelmscott Press.
As part of this celebration, on November 6th, 2021 the William Morris Society (UK) will host a one-day symposium, “The Kelmscott Press and Its Legacies.” The William Morris Society in the United States is a co-sponsor of this event.
Keynote speakers: Dr Marcus Waithe (University of Cambridge), ‘Pocket Cathedrals: Craftsmanship, Architecture, and the Kelmscott Press’; Yoshiko Yamamoto (Arts & Crafts Press, Tacoma).
The William Morris Society (UK) invites proposals for twenty-minute papers that address any aspect of the Press’s activities, its history or its legacies. Papers may consider, but are not limited to, some of the following topics:
- The significance of the Kelmscott Press for the study of material texts, book history and printing
- The influence of the Press on twentieth-century print cultures and the ‘visible language of modernism’ (McGann)
- The people of the Press (the compositors, pressmen, paper-makers and others whose work made the Press possible)
- Hand-press printing as a form of craft production
- The relationship between the Press and Morris’s other areas of cultural production
- The relationship between Morris’s materialist aesthetic and his politics
- Digital re-mediations of the Press’s books and/or the relevance of print in a digital age
- Morris as book collector
Please send proposals by email to Owen Holland, journal@williammorrissociety.org.uk
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2021
It is to be hoped that the symposium will take place at a location in central London, though it may take place online if circumstances require it.