Golden Cockerel Press
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Golden Cockerel Press was a major English private press operating between 1920 and 1961.
The Press was founded by Harold (Hal) Midgley Taylor (1893-1925) in 1920 and was first in Waltham St Lawrence in Berkshire where he had unsuccessfully tried fruit farming. Taylor bought an army surplus hut and assembled it in Waltham St Lawrence as a combined workshop and living quarters: it was cold and damp; money and food were short; the inexperience of the novice printers meant that work was slow and the results poor; and the authors who came to help mostly sat around drinking tea and chatting. Taylor had tuberculosis of which he died in 1925.
The press soon found the formula for which it became famous — beautiful handmade limited editions of classic works produced to the very highest of standards. The books were typeset by hand, often using specially designed typefaces, notably those designed by Eric Gill especially for the press. A major feature of Golden Cockerel books were the original illustrations, usually wood engravings, contributed by, among others, Eric Gill, Robert Gibbings, John Buckland Wright, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes Miller Parker, David Jones and Eric Ravilious. The press was credited with having revived the British tradition of wood engraving.
