The Eclogues of Virgil

Captivated by the books that William Morris (1834-96) was making at his Kelmscott Press in England and the success of French publisher Ambroise Vollard's artist's books, Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937) started his own private Cranach Press in Weimar, Germany, in 1913. One of its first goals was to turn Virgil's Eclogues into the perfect book. Kessler spared little, commissioning woodcuts from Maillol and a new translation from Marc Lafargue. To add a Renaissance flavor, Kessler chose a fifteenth-century Venetian typeface by Nicolas Jenson and hired Morris's colleague Emery Walker to supervise the cutting of new type. Kessler rhapsodized that the font was winged with inner tension, and it gleamed with tender light. Ever conscious of unity, Maillol designed his 43 woodcuts-here depicting Tityrus-to be equally important to the type, actually referring to his illustrations as typography.