From elementary typography to digital publishing

A century of printing, bookbinding and publishing education

As this weekend's Oxford Open Doors celebrates 'books, libraries and printing' in the city, we look at the role Brookes and its predecessor institutions have played in providing training for the book industry for the last hundred years.

When John Henry Brookes was appointed as the new head of the Oxford School of Arts in 1928, he immediately set down to work on introducing two new courses: architecture and printing. The school had offered limited instruction in printing before the First World War, with elementary and advanced typography listed in the 1911 prospectus for the Oxford City Technical School (below). Previous attempts at introducing full professional training for the printing trade had however stalled.

This changed with John Henry Brookes’s intervention, orchestrated before he’d even taken up his post. A meeting with Dr John Johnson, who as Printer to the University headed the University Press, and Mr Cameron, Secretary of the City of Oxford Education Committee, secured support for the creation of a printing department. Dr Johnson’s backing was instrumental: not only was the Press the main employer in the sector, it also lent the School premises and equipment, and even provided teachers.

Despite the school’s limited resources, John Henry Brookes would have been keen to develop vocational training for a growing local industry. The city had been a centre for printing since the 15th century, with a press becoming firmly established in the 1580s to serve the needs of the university. First set up in the Sheldonian Theatre, the university’s print shop moved to the Clarendon Building in the eighteenth century, and to its current home in Walton Street in 1830. It continued to dominate the local printing industry into the 20th century, but small printing presses also thrived. By 1901, 28 firms of printers employed 639 people in Oxford, while in 1911 the university press alone had a workforce of 750, making it the city’s largest single employer. In the 1930s printing in Oxford started to be overtaken in size by the motor industry, but it was still growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country, employing 1,600 people.

1931-32 Year Book and Report

The courses in the new Department of Printing were designed to meet the needs of this expanding workforce. The year book for 1931-32 reports that there were 76 students in that session, including 43 compositors and readers, 13 machine-minders, 14 bookbinders and six designers. The publication also showcases many examples of their work, as does the 1929 prospectus.

The Juxon Street premises of the Department of Printing

In 1945 the department moved to new premises in Juxon Street. The building offered limited facilities, and was described in dire terms in Proof, the department’s student newspaper, in its first issue in 1955. The ‘”prison” by the canal’, with its ‘musty, cramped “classroom”’, ‘rickety, rusty stairway’ and ‘gloomy atmosphere’ had by then just been vacated as the department moved again, to more spacious accommodation on Cowley Road.

The printing workshop in Cowley Road

It had also invested in ‘modern and comprehensive new machinery and equipment’, as highlighted in the 1953 prospectus. Day and evening classes sought to meet the training needs of printing apprentices and journeymen, but also of those in administrative posts. This included instruction in hand composition, letterpress machine work, typographic design, lettering and layout, linotype composition, monotype keyboard, monotype caster, bookbinding, costing and estimating. Students were encouraged to sit external examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute in Typography, Typographic Design and Bookbinding, for which the school was an examination centre.

Despite this dedication to providing vocational training to an important local industry, trade printing courses moved to Reading in 1968. The change was the result of rationalisation called for by the Pilkington Report. By then however the college had broadened the scope of its printing education with the introduction of the first full-time publishing qualification in British higher education. A leaflet from 1962 gives an overview of the new three-year Diploma in Publishing: “the course consists of the study of design and practice in all printing methods with the theory and science of a complex and rapidly developing industry.” In addition to training in design and printing, the course included business subjects and a work placement in a publishing office.

The diploma set the foundation for the development of publishing education, and in 1982 the Oxford Polytechnic introduced the country’s first undergraduate degree course in publishing. The Observer newspaper welcomed the news, seen as a sign that publishing would no longer be the preserve of the 'gentlemanly amateur with nothing but flair'.

Teaching and research in publishing continued to go from strength to strength, and 1994 saw the launch of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University.The department now offers a BA in Publishing Media and MAs in Publishing, Publishing and Language, Digital Publishing, International Publishing, and Book History and Publishing Culture. Bookbinding instruction also still takes place at Brookes, with an evening course led by Ian Ross, who has taught here since 1962 and had bindings commissioned by John Henry Brookes. 

Visit us on Saturday and Sunday (12-4pm) on our Headington Campus to find out more about Brookes' history.