T. J. Cobden Sanderson

Page from the Doves Bible by Cobden Sanderson

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (2 December 1840 – 7 September 1922) 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 (Manchester University) and then Trinity College, Cambridge to study law.^[1] 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 digitalization, destroying the punches and matricies constituted destroying the font itself. The Doves Typeface is now lost forever. ^[2]

He married (Julia Sarah) Anne Cobden (1853–1926), a daughter of Richard Cobden, and added her surname to his, becoming Thomas Cobden-Sanderson.^[3]

References

• Marianne Tidcombe. The Doves Press. London: British Library; New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2002 [i.e. 2003].

1. ^ Sanderson (post Cobden-Sanderson), Thomas James in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ Cable, Carole (1974), "The Printing Types of the Doves Press: Their History and Destruction", The Library Quarterly 44 (3): 219–230, JSTOR 4306410 
3. ^ SD19 – Cobden-Sanderson

External links

• T.J. Cobden Sanderson Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Works by Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson at Project Gutenberg

Persondata
Name	Sanderson, Thomas James Cobden
Alternative names
Short description	British artist and bookbinder.
Date of birth	2 December 1840
Place of birth	Alnwick, Northumberland
Date of death	7 September 1922
Place of death