Rachel Leff and Rachel Longaker IS281 Professor Maack ... - Ucla

means agrees with critics of Morris’s style, but voices their concerns that the economic
considerations of a commercial printer preclude the use of the hand press and fine
handmade materials. But the author maintains that Morris’s focus on design and quality
rejuvenated the commercial trade, and brought new life to the private press movement.
To fully illustrate Sparling's adoration, I will quote at length:
When the world has tired of its Moloch-worship, as enthroning the
machine as its god and ruler, of accepting a mechanicalized [sic]
commercialism as its philosophy of life, of sacrificing the natural beauty
of the earth to its greed, of wasting the accumulated riches due to the
creative powers of Man in the past, and frustrating all that these powers
might effect in the present, it will turn to Morris as its prophet and guide
(131).
Romanticism clearly influenced by Marxist theory underscore Sparling's hagiographical
treatment of Morris’s design influence.
In a history of printing originally published in 1955, Steinberg (1996) asserts that
the history of printing underlies most other historical phenomena; trends in the history of
politics, religion, and science, to name a few, are inextricably bound to the history of
printing. While he does not posit a theoretical perspective, he does offer a great deal of
credence to the economic history of printing. Further, he traces a progression in the
history of print, even if it is not fully accurate to state that he has a progressive view of
print history.
Steinberg treats Morris as an important figure in the history of printing, but is
ultimately disparaging of the achievements of Kelmscott. Two great influences on book
design Steinberg attributes to Morris are the treatment of two facing pages of a book as a
single design element, and the importance of design unity between ink, paper, and type
face. But, like other historians, Steinberg finds Morris’s greatest achievement in the
Leff and Longaker, Page 17