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Abbey Mills was a paper mill in the Grosvenor Chater Group which closed in the
1990s. Situated in North Wales, it took
advantage of good water and a port nearby that could bring in raw materials. In
the last century it specialised in high-quality papers such as Basingwerk
Parchment, Greenfield, and Royal Cornwall which it introduced
in the 1920s. A speciality of the mill was making paper from esparto grass.
Amongst
the archives of the mill we found a typescript, written in the 1920s by the then
manager, describing in some detail the processing of the esparto grass, and this
text is at the heart of our new book. It is of course being printed on a stock
of Basingwerk, a fine and quite heavy, opaque paper with a creamy colour. We
also acquired a collection of a dozen batches of coloured papers from the mill
and so looked for a way to incorporate them. For some time I've had a copy of
the Abbey Mills paper specimen book produced in 1958,
with texts and illustrations designed to show off their range of papers. Whilst we
don't
have such a range, we've used the coloured papers now here at the press to make
something along the same lines.
For the
material printed on the coloured leaves we've taken our inspiration partly from samples
in the original specimen book and partly from the 1950s period itself: the 1951
Festival of Britain, the 1953 Coronation, typefaces and texts from the period,
various Curwen 'dashes', the two-element Glint ornament, and a personal
favourite, the Festival display face; and it's been an opportunity to pull out many of our
text founts - Dante, Perpetua, Octavian, Caslon Old Face,
Fournier - all hand-set of course. The main text is set in 12pt
Romulus with Optima headings. The whole thing runs to 64 pages
and will be case bound with a letterpress-printed pattern-paper on the boards -
see below.
We will
publish more details and pricing closer to publication.
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