John Curwen and the Tonic sol-fa system

John Cur­wen was born in Liv­ersedge, West York­shire in late 1816. Fol­low­ing John Wes­ley’s exam­ple, John was a non­con­formist min­is­ter and was keen to alle­vi­ate the worst of the con­di­tions in which he found his flock.

John Cur­wen was con­vinced that one relief for those he looked after was music. In the days before any record­ings and with lim­it­ed gen­er­al under­stand­ing of musi­cal nota­tion, it was dif­fi­cult to share musi­cal works between choirs and con­gre­ga­tions.

John met Sarah Ann Glover, who had invent­ed and per­fect­ed a tech­nique to doc­u­ment and teach music, her Nor­wich sol-fa Lad­der. Cur­wen saw the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pop­u­larise Glover’s method to share more broad­ly the joy that came from music.

In 1841 John Cur­wen was giv­en a mis­sion by the Con­fer­ence of non­con­formist Sun­day School teach­ers in Hull. His task was to cul­ti­vate singing through­out the move­ment. His base was Plais­tow, at that stage a devel­op­ment on the route out of Lon­don to Essex.

Curwen Press and Music Printing

Print­ing Ton­ic sol-fa was far less com­plex than print­ing tra­di­tion­al music nota­tion, but still fid­dly — need­ing spe­cial spac­ing and char­ac­ters. John Cur­wen’s mis­sion was threat­ened when exist­ing print­ers were less than keen to print his Ton­ic sol-fa works for rea­son­able prices.

In 1863 John devel­oped his own print­ing works to print this music ini­tial­ly in a cot­tage next to John’s chapel in North Street, Plais­tow.

For a long peri­od the press was a sub­sidiary of the Ton­ic sol-fa move­ment. The press exist­ed only to print — as cheap­ly as pos­si­ble — Ton­ic sol-fa music in huge vol­umes to make good on the mis­sion John had been giv­en in 1841. Job­bing work was car­ried out as a sec­ondary con­cern.

The enter­prise — includ­ing press and music pub­lish­ing — passed from John to his two sons John Spencer Cur­wen and Joseph Sped­ding Cur­wen on John’s death in 1880.

Harold Spedding Curwen

Joseph Cur­wen’s youngest son, Harold Sped­ding Cur­wen, had been edu­cat­ed in print­ing and let­ter­ing. He stud­ied under Edward John­ston at the Cen­tral School, and spent time in Ger­many with Oscar Brand­stet­ter at Leipzig. In 1914 John Spencer Cur­wen appoint­ed Harold as the man­ag­er of the press.

Harold sought to use his appre­ci­a­tion for type and let­ter­ing, and his mem­ber­ship of the Coun­cil of the Design and Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion, to bring more joy to his print­ing work.

This was­n’t always appre­ci­at­ed and West Ham Cor­po­ra­tion Tramways closed their account with the Cur­wen Press when their orders were received in Caslon rather than their usu­al­ly expect­ed weak­er types. They con­sid­ered their con­tract with Cur­wen had been breached!

In 1915 the short­age of lead for the war effort gave Harold a great oppor­tu­ni­ty — he was able to sell, above book val­ue, the accu­mu­lat­ed years of lead type and replace them with a small­er num­ber of more refined faces. In this peri­od from 1915 Cur­wen’s main faces were –

• Caslon Old Face, Mono­type Old Style № 2, Mod­ern Wide № 18, Bold № 53 and Mono­type Imprint (pre­sum­ably for Mono­type com­po­si­tion)
• Goudy Ken­ner­ley and Shank’s Plan­tin for hand com­po­si­tion

Joseph Thorp and Oliver Simon

Harold Cur­wen appoint­ed Joseph Thorp as con­sul­tant to the press in 1918 who sug­gest­ed the press adopt a mark. It was the uni­corn that was select­ed and over the years many dis­tin­guished crafts­men have giv­en their own inter­pre­ta­tion of this mark. The mark is designed to embody ​‘pride, puri­ty, endurance and match­less spir­it’.

Thorp was able to head on the road to sell Cur­wen’s print­ing as Harold found a voice for the press. Harold issued adverts invit­ing cus­tomers to ​‘Get the spir­it of joy in your print­ed things’, and offered that ​‘I arrange and make COURAGEOUS PRINTING’.

Oliv­er Simon​’s appoint­ment in 1920 as a trainee gave fur­ther strength to the artis­tic changes of the Press as it moved from the side-busi­ness of a music pub­lish­er to a well-recog­nised print­ing house. It was Oliv­er Simon that led The Fleu­ron which was print­ed on some occa­sions by the Cur­wen Press.

Music and Printing Split

As the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of print­ing work grew, the bonds between the music pub­lish­ing and print­ing side of the busi­ness weak­ened — one was no longer com­plete­ly depen­dant on the oth­er.

In 1933 the Cur­wen firm was for­mal­ly split: J Cur­wen & Sons became the music pub­lish­er, which ran until 1969; and Cur­wen Press Ltd. was the name of the print­er.

Quality Jobbing Work

The focus moved from music to more gen­er­al print­ing, and key to offer­ing excel­lent job­bing work was to bring the stan­dards of book print­ing to job­bing work. Cur­wen sought to offer the same qual­i­ty in the small­est, ephemer­al work as the largest and most pres­ti­gious books.

Between 1923 and 1925 Cur­wen adopt­ed Max­imil­lian, Rudolf Koch’s Kur­siv and Wal­baum. Wal­baum remained exclu­sive to Cur­wen in the UK until 1933 when Mono­type began to offer Wal­baum on their cast­ing sys­tem.

World War II

Cur­wen’s loca­tion in Plais­tow was less than two miles from the Luft­waffe tar­gets of Lon­don’s dock­lands. The press was dam­aged severe­ly dur­ing the Blitz, but work car­ried on as usu­al, with roof­ing tem­porar­i­ly repaired, and tea pro­vid­ed whether gas and water were still work­ing or not. Unfor­tu­nate­ly a large amount of Cur­wen’s orig­i­nal music print­ing plates were destroyed by ene­my action. John Cur­wen’s orig­i­nal chapel, with it’s thick walls, remained stand­ing.

Typography for Hospitality

Charles Mayo was appoint­ed design­er to the British Trans­port Com­mis­sion in 1954 and sought to raise the stan­dard of rail­way print­ing. He patro­n­ised the Cur­wen Press and found a part­ner in the press that devot­ed effort to great print­ing; could use let­ter­press to best advan­tage; and gave a dis­tinc­tive style to their print­ing.

Cur­wen’s Bert Smith was a huge­ly skilled com­pos­i­tor with a flair for mak­ing great use of Mono­type­’s increas­ing out­put of well-designed bor­der units. Smith’s style was the sub­ject of a 1958 Mono­type Recorder, Typog­ra­phy for Hos­pi­tal­i­ty, which is avail­able on the Met­al Type web­site. That num­ber of the Recorder was print­ed by the Cur­wen Press.

Bert Smith retired from Cur­wen Press in 1964 and died in Novem­ber 1983. The style con­tin­ued after Smith’s retire­ment, and the exam­ple here is from 1967.

The 1960s and Beyond

By 1965 a rein­vig­o­rat­ed Board decid­ed to go for high­er lev­els of out­put to keep the fir­m’s stan­dards high and fund the new machin­ery and equip­ment to stay cur­rent. Four-colour off­set machin­ery was installed in 1965 and this was part­nered with a small firm — Harleyprint — that Cur­wen had bought in August 1964.

It is scarce­ly exag­ger­at­ing to say that, for the Cur­wen Press at that time, let­ter­press rep­re­sent­ed the only true faith and that off­set print­ing, although lith­o­g­ra­phy had been prac­tised at Plais­tow for longer than in most print­ing firms, was not of a sim­i­lar stand­ing.

– Basil Harley, quot­ed in the Pen­rose Annu­al 1978

Cur­wen found itself with around 250 employ­ees and ambi­tions to achieve the same high stan­dards in colour litho as it was famous for in let­ter­press. The firm was well-con­nect­ed with the spec­trum of British indus­try and estab­lish­ment: work for HMSO, the Inde­pen­dent Tele­vi­sion Author­i­ty, Rio Tin­to and UNICEF was all car­ried out. Work ranged from ephemera to the finest repro­duc­tion of artis­tic vol­umes.

Closure

Accord­ing to most of my papers, Cur­wen Press closed in 1984. The Gazette records that liq­uida­tors were appoint­ed in August 1985. Hap­pi­ly, many of the let­ter­press arte­facts lived on through small­er let­ter­press print­ers. Ian Mor­timer still uses the amaz­ing fur­ni­ture and racks from the press, and Alan Brignull uses a case of Caslon from 1957.

Location

St Mary’s Road, Plais­tow, Lon­don

““The Plais­tow Wall­pa­pers”, designed by Edward Baw­den & issued by the Cur­wen Press — advert in Design Mag­a­zine, 1934” flickr pho­to by mikeyash­worth https://flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/4451282107 shared under a Cre­ative Com­mons (BY-NC-ND) license