T. J. Cobden-Sanderson

Who was T. J. Cobden-Sanderson?

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was an English artist and bookbinder associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.

He was born in Alnwick, Northumberland, as Thomas James Sanderson. Sanderson attended many schools including the Royal Grammar School Worcester before entering Owen's College and then Trinity College, Cambridge to study law. He left without taking a degree, and entered Lincoln's Inn as a barrister.

As a friend of William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson was involved with the Arts and Crafts ideology and during a dinner party with the Morrises he was persuaded by Morris's wife Jane Burden to take up book-binding. In 1884 he opened a workshop and in 1900 the Doves Press was founded by him along with Emery Walker in Hammersmith, London. The press produced a number of books, including the famous five volume Doves Bible from 1902-1905. By 1909 Cobden Sanderson and his partner Emery Walker were at the height of a protracted and bitter dispute involving the rights to the Doves Type in the dissolution of their partnership.

The special font known as the Doves Type was used in printing all of the books produced by the press, and as part of the partnership dissolution agreement, all rights to the type were to pass to Emery Walker upon the death of Cobden-Sanderson. Yet, when the press closed in 1916 Cobden Sanderson threw the type along with its punches and matrices into the Thames. In this time, as there was no digitization, destroying the punches and matricies constituted destroying the font itself. The Doves Typeface is now lost forever.