Place    From 1893  To 1917

Doves Bindery

Categories: Commerce, Literature

The Doves Press in Hammersmith was founded in 1900 by Thomas Cobden-Sanderson in partnership with Emery Walker and was named after the nearby pub. Sanderson had already set up The Doves Bindery in 1893 and it bound all the books that Doves printed as well as many of the Kelmscott books. The enterprise was an examplar of the Arts and Crafts movement. They used their own type, The Doves Type, based on types from the middle ages. Emery and Sanderson fell out and the partnership was dissolved in 1908. Regarding the typeface they agreed that Sanderson could continue to use it and that eventual ownership would rest with whoever outlived the other. Sanderson (the older man) was not happy with this and by 1917 he had thrown all of the type into the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge (piece by piece, at night), all but one piece which is preserved in the Emery Walker Library, housed at the Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. Sanderson had already ceased printing during the war but the destruction of the type saw the end of the Press. He moved into the building and died there a few years later.

2015 - amazing, someone has retrieved the type from the river!

2024: That link has died (after only 9 years - no staying power) but we thank Mike Coleman for finding Creative Review.

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This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Doves Bindery

Commemorated ati

Doves Bindery and Press

Initially (ha-ha) we were puzzled by the letters at the bottom of this plaque...

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Thomas Cobden-Sanderson

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1840-1922, founded the Doves Bindery and Doves...

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