Oak Knoll

Limited to 750 numbered copies. (Ashbee p.65; Ransom no.4). A fine copy. Edited from the earliest editions by Janet E. Ashbee and printed in Caslon in black and red. With a woodcut frontispiece by Reginald Savage. A most ambitious project by C.R. Ashbee and his Essex House Press. Asbee founded his press to continue the tradition of William Morris and was aided in his effort by two compositors and a pressman that came from the Kelmscott Press.

This 17th century Christian allegory is the third production of the press founded by C. R. Ashbee in 1898 as an addition to the several crafts practiced at his Guild of Handicrafts located at Essex House in London's Mile End Road. Ashbee purchased the presses and other production equipment (though not the type) formerly owned by the Kelmscott Press, which had shut down at the death of William Morris, and he printed books for 12 years with vellum, ink, and paper identical to that used by Kelmscott, in an effort to carry on the tradition Morris had established. But the Essex House Press, because it was conceived of and continued as part of a larger enterprise involving various artisans at work in a group of workshops, always had its own special identity, a fact which Cave reflects when he calls it the "Arts and Crafts press par excellence."