Credo

Private press and fine press publications sometimes foster a culture of self–publishing, and works of individual passion or conviction came into print as a way to secure a platform for ideas and ideals. The pamphlet form, with its long history of political and social speech, was suited to such proclamations. The scale and also distribution of such works tended to be modest, though a tradition of publishing talks and presentations to bibliographical societies arose as well, and pamphlets designed to preserve this particular line of semi–public thought became a conspicuous feature in the print community. [JD]

Exhibit Contents:

Exhibit Home

1. The complaint, and the consolation; or, Night thoughts

2. The Fables of Æesop, and others / With designs on wood, by Thomas Bewick

3. Un autre monde: transformations, visions, incarnations, ascensions, locomations, excursions, stations, cosmogonies, fantasmagories...

4. Mr. Cryptogame

5. News from nowhere: or, An epoch of rest, being some chapters from Utopian romance

6. The nature of Gothic, a chapter of the stones of Venice

7. Daphnis and Chloe: a most sweet abd pleasant pastoral romance for young ladies

8. The Sphinx

9. The ideal book or book beautiful, a tract on calligraphy, printing, and illustrations & on the book beautiful as a whole

10. Credo

11. La conquête des étoiles : poème épique : suivi des jugements de la presse française et italienne / F.–T. Marinetti

12. La danse futuriste : danse de l,aviateur, danse du shrapnell, danse de la mitrailleuse : manifeste futuriste

13. Calligrammes; poèmes de la paix et de la guerre, 1913–1916 ... Avec un portrait de l'auteur par Pablo Picasso, gravé sur bois par R. Jaudon.

14. Bible.Old Testament. Song of Solomon.

15. Mr.Knife, Miss Fork

16. Kem byt’? / V. Mai︠a︡kovskiĭ ; ris. N. Shifrin.

17. The ghost in the underblows

18. Les fleurs du mal

19. Bateau ivre

20. Le dur désir de durer













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UCLA Call Number: Press Coll. Doves Annex

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Credo

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Credo

Large image

Credo

Large image

Credo

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Full title

Creator: Cobden–Sanderson,T.J. (Thomas James)

Publisher: Doves Press

Publication Place: Hammersmith

Date of Publication: 1908

Dimensions 17 cm

Physical Description:

The text is printed entirely in black ink with no variation. There are gilt edges on all pages. It is bound in blue morocco with gilt edges. Very light in hand and portable, the book is quite small and modest – one step above a pocketbook. The title, “CREDO” is gold–stamped unassumingly in small type on the spine and front cover. Where the blue morocco ends on the inside of the front and back cover, there are two thin parallel lines of gold trim. There are no images or illustrations anywhere in the book. The Doves Press watermark (two doves and the initials “C.S.” and “E.W.”) is very faintly visible on some pages, including the interior of the front cover. It appears as a half circle at the interior, center edge of the page.

Provenance: Unknown.

Condition:

Overall, this copy is in very good condition. All pages are straight and clean. There is some wear and deterioration of the spine, but the binding remains intact.

Additional Info:

There are no images, designs or illustrations.

Interpretation:

If Cobden–Sanderson’s The Ideal Book established the Doves Press’ aesthetic and technical aspirations, then Credo is an evolved example of those objectives realized.

Credo is an excellent piece to examine alongside The Ideal Book. Printed eight years after its predecessor, Credo has a much more polished material presence. While The Ideal Book set out to define the artistic and technical merits of printing in the Arts & Crafts movement, Credo flaunts the possibilities of Cobden–Sanderson’s “Book Beautiful.” It demonstrates what Cobden–Sanderson believed a book could become when each of its elements was carefully constructed and designed to support the composite whole.

While the production quality of Credo feels more mature than the less sturdy Ideal Book, there is altogether a fascinating consistency in the style of Cobden–Sanderson’s printing between 1900 and 1908. The same fine restraint we see in The Ideal Book has been repeated in Credo. The reader is met with the signature Doves Type, printed exclusively in black ink and accompanied by no illustrations, borders or embellishments. The familiar Doves Press watermark is still visible; and where The Ideal Book was impressively organized with capitalized section headings and margin keys, Credo remains so with frequent line breaks and paragraph markers.

Compared, though, to The Ideal Book’s large and ragged pages, Credo is small, sturdy, clean, and contained – it is truly representative of the practical elegance for which the Doves Press books had come to be known. It is also worth mentioning that this is not a spatially economical work – while its size is less assuming than The Ideal Book’s, the number of blank pages far outnumbers the pages on which text appears. This is evidence of Cobden–Sanderson’s principles in action, and of everything that the fine presses of the Arts & Crafts movement championed in the art of bookbinding. As Morris, Cobden–Sanderson and others believed, books were not (or should not be) brought into existence merely to disseminate content to an audience; they were to be understood and introduced into the world as well–crafted works of art. The text itself – in this case Cobden–Sanderson’s reflections on life, death and man’s place in the universe – was seen as only one of many elements in service of the composite whole. The blank pages remind us that the work of the “Book Beautiful” expands beyond the mere text, and it is clear that Cobden–Sanderson conceived of Credo as a showcase for this conviction.

Text Content Description:

A very brief tract spanning only four pages, Credo is a series of short poetic statements (most beginning with “I believe”) summarizing the author’s metaphysical convictions regarding life and death and mankind’s place in the universe. For example, he writes: “I believe and I see that as the earth turns upon itself we pass into the light and wake to life & die downward into darkness and the sleep of rest, and that we are one in life and sleep with the earth's self… ”

Contributor: Margarita Howell