The Book of the Holy Grail from the Morte D'Arthur
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Malory, Sir Thomas. The Book of the Holy Grail from the Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory together with William Caxton's Prologue. Birmingham: Birmingham School of Printing, 1934.
This beautiful example of fine printing was produced under the direction of Leonard Jay (1888-1963) at the City of Birmingham School of Printing, where he served as Head from 1925 to 1953. Jay believed that even though the printing process had been mechanized, printers could still produce books that rivaled those created with hand presses. The cover of The Book of the Holy Grail was designed and cut on linoleum by Ivy Ellis and Stanley Dennis. In the interior, there are seven full-page wood engravings by Ivy Ellis, Winifred Hobday, Madeline Rose, and Rose Thornton; fourteen decorated shields, printed in red and blue, were cut by Evelyn Hill and Stanley Dennis. The book was printed by students in the school's Letterpress Machine classes. The book prints the latter part of Malory's tale of the Grail, focusing on Galahad and the achievement of the Grail, in modernized English.