Philip Marriage writes: HMSO was heavily involved with the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, particularly the small design team who faced undoubtedly their greatest test when for the first time all the official printing was coordinated and designed as a single project. This extract from From Layout to Graphic Design carried no author’s name but was probably written seventy years ago by Harry Carter, the first Head of HMSO’s Typographic Design and Layout Section (later HMSO Graphic Design).
The displacement of thought, effort and means from other things to a Coronation defies foresight and deserves a record. The total of printing resources spent on the Coronation of 1953 makes the official part, the printed words addressed to participants in the ceremony, insignificant in scale. Printing can hardly be a conspicuous item in a ceremonial worked out before Gutenberg, and it has been given little attention since his day. It is interesting as an index of the regard paid to typography in a British ceremony and within its limits a test of the ability of the State to print worthily of a great occasion.
The Ministry of Works, of Government departments, bears the biggest load in a Coronation, Scotland Yard, the ceremonial branches of the Treasury and the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Government Hospitality Fund have important parts to play. In 1953 the Council of Industrial Design did admirable work in inspiring an improvement in souvenirs. But in relation to its size HM Stationery Office has to put forth as great an effort as any.
But a functionary of earlier origin than any Secretary of State or Minister of the Crown emerges from potentiality on Royal occasions and wields the largest power. The Earl Marshal has to create an organisation to deal with most intricate and difficult matters, printing for the ceremony among the rest. The Earl Marshal is head of the College of Arms: his department at Coronation time is staffed by professional heralds aided by temporary recruits, many of them volunteers. It is they who give the orders for most of the official printing and theirs is the prevailing influence on coronation style.
A synopsis of some two hundred orders passed through HM Stationery Office and charged to the Coronation vote sanctioned by the Treasury is not impressive by reason of its bulk. The addition of printing for the Thanksgiving at St Paul’s and the service at St Giles’s Cathedral and the menus for State luncheons and banquets makes a further dozen. But in comparison with normal Government publishing and jobbing the Coronation orders called for a great deal of office work. People unaccustomed to specify printing and without the support of a permanent organisation for the purpose had to be helped to put their demands into printer’s language. HM Stationery Office felt that it could not avoid responsibility for anticipating what the demands of the authorities would be and making sure that they were made in due time. It expected, also, that some improvement on the precedents would be called for and that it ought to be ready, well in advance, with suggestions for better printing and designs that could be carried out within the time allowable.
In May 1952 the Stationery Office drew up a guess-schedule and a time-table of Coronation work and started making designs. Soon afterwards it began a series of weekly meetings to review progress and criticise layouts. Thereafter the design unit of eight people in HM Stationery Office was rather more than quarter engaged on the Coronation until the following February.
Precedents were studied at the British Museum and in the archive of HM Stationery Office. There had never been any but perfectly plain Coronation printing in this country apart from the Service printed for sale by the two University Presses and recently by the King’s Printer. The style of the Form and Order of the Service derives from the book done by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1831 for the Coronation of King William IV and Queen Adelaide, which is a very plainly printed affair, Crown 4to, set in 14pt Modern face with a plain blue paper cover. In 1901 the Archbishop insisted that the Service must be printed in the same style and in exactly the same type as in 1831. The model was followed again in 1911. In 1937, however, Eyre and Spottiswoode redesigned the book and set it in 26pt Jenson style type, with red for rubrics and vellum paper cased board binding.
The Ceremonies are known from the time of Queen Victoria. They had always been printed by Harrison and Sons Ltd, contractors for Royal Household printing, as a foolscap folio very plainly set and a gray paper cover.
The Form and Order of the Service with the Music was first printed for the use of the choir in the Abbey in 1901 by arrangement between the Organist of Westminster Abbey and Novello & Co Ltd. It was an unofficial publication by Novello, who were free to sell it; but HM Stationery Office authorised the printing of the Service (which is Crown copyright) by Novello and ordered the copies needed by the choir. It was done in 1911 and 1937 in Novello’s standard style for choir music, in paper covers, but editions with wide margins, red rule borders, and cloth or leather bindings were put on sale. The covers for the 1937 editions had a heraldic design drawn by Sir Gerald Wollaston, then Garter King of Arms.
The Coronation Service is not in the Prayer Book sanctioned by Parliament; and it is a moot point whether the privileges of printing the Prayer Book belonging to the King’s Printer (Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd) and the two University Presses covers it. However, as far as printing is concerned it has always been treated as though it were a Prayer Book service. As soon as printing is ordered by the Privy Council from the Controller of HM Stationery Office he passes the copy prepared by the Archbishop of Canterbury and approved by the Sovereign in Council to the King’s Printer, and the University Presses use the King’s Printer’s proofs as copy for their editions. The King’s Printer supplies HM Stationery Office with copies for the use of guests at the ceremony. He sells copies in various styles of binding.
There is a large amount of jobbing involved in the organisation of the Abbey ceremony. Printing for the use in the Abbey is ordered by the Earl Marshal from HM Stationery Office; directions for approaching the Abbey are printed by order of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis.
Files of the jobs done for the previous Coronation are kept by the College of Arms. Until 1953 there had been little or no attempt to design them, and HM Stationery Office did no more than order them from Harrision & Sons, leaving the details to be settled between the Earl Marshal’s staff and the printer.
Much of the most intricate of the jobs is the series of admission-cards, whose various colours and layouts serve as indications of the status of the guests and their places. There are also manuals for rehearsals, for the Gold Staff Officers who control the admission and ushering of the guests, plans of the various stages of the proceedings, dress-regulations for many kinds of guests, cards fastened to the seats giving names of the occupants and even a booklet for the guidance of the Sovereign.
The Police send every guest a leaflet of instructions on how to reach the Abbey and a windscreen label for his car showing its proper routeing and giving directions to drivers.
The first approach from the Earl Marshal to HM Stationery Office came early in July 1952. The initial step was to supply his office with letterheads and stationery. The letterheads were designed by HM Stationery Office and die-stamped by Harrison & Sons Ltd in royal blue using an old die of the Royal Arms.
The traditional summons to Peers, ‘Right Trusty and Well beloved’, in 21 variants suited to the degree of the person addressed, was the second item. A somewhat decorative design based on letters patent of Charles I was rejected by the Heralds, and the summons was written in Victorian copperplate by a litho-artist and printed by lithography on azure paper of foolscap folio size.
The invitation (top) to the ceremony was first considered in August 1952. The precedents had been drawn by the College of Arms or by eminent artists at their invitation. For this coronation designs were invited from the artists associated with the College, from HM Stationery Office and a number of distinguished independent artists. The selection was made by Garter King of Arms with advice from a panel of assessors. They decided in favour of a combination of a decorative border by Miss Joan Hassall, RI, and the wording based on Bembo type drawn by the Stationery Office artist, Mr S B Stead.
The combined designed was proofed in many colours and dark Prussian blue was chosen. It was printed by Harrison & Sons Ltd from a line-block on a toned board of matt finish specially made by Hollingworth Mill. The edges were gilt and the seal of the Duke of Norfolk was embossed blind.
The authorities were anxious that the invitations, unlike those for previous Coronations, should be light and graceful as befitted a Queen’s ceremony, and they were glad that the design had been made by a woman. The style of lettering was altered at Miss Hassall’s request to Bell type.
The typography and layout of the Form and Order of the Service to be performed . . . at the Royal Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was done by Mr H P B Finberg for the King’s Printer, Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. The size of the book was altered to Imperial 8vo by agreement between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Garter, who wanted the Service and the book of Ceremonies, for which he was responsible, to be uniform in size and harmonious in style. The Service was set in 24 point Perpetua with red for the rubrics. It was cased in red cloth blocked on one side with the Royal Arms, specially drawn by the College of Arms, in gold. 7,000 copies with a special title-page were delivered to HM Stationery Office for the guests in the Abbey. 25 of these were bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe in dark red Niger morocco for the use of Her Majesty The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and royal guests. Another 500 were cased in red buckram for distinguished guests.
The paper was an all-rag machine-made produced by Hollingworth Mill for the occasion. It was lightly-sized to minimise rattle, which can be disturbing when 7,000 pages are turned in unison, and toned so as not to compete in brilliance with ceremonial costumes.
The King’s Printer published his edition on the 20 April 1953 and sold it printed on papers of various qualities in various styles of binding.
The Earl Marshal’s officials and HM Stationery Office were agreed in wanting The Ceremonies to be Observed at the Royal Coronation of Queen Elizabeth to be a much more handsomer thing than the foolscap folio set in ‘bread-and-butter’ style of the previous Coronation. The original design by HM Stationery Office in Crown 4to, had a two-page title and a binding in white imitation vellum with the Royal Arms in heraldic colouring. The Earl Marshal’s advisers emphatically desired it to be uniform in size and style with the Service, though rather more splendid, as befitted its subject.
It was understood that copy for the Ceremonies could not be complete until the last moment, so that printing and binding must be done at high speed. It was not certain whether there would be time to sew the book in sections or whether it would be saddle-stitched. The arrangement of the processions, sometimes five columns wide, and the very lengthy title of the book make it a difficult problem for the typographer. Specimen pages were submitted in Perpetua type.
The Earl Marshal decided that the specimen pages in Crown 4to were too cramped and that the type was not black enough. The King’s Printer had a preference for Imperial 8vo as the size for the Service. Both books were, therefore, replanned in that size and Times Roman type was chosen for the Ceremonies. Because of the short time allowable for binding, it was decided that the Ceremonies must be produced in paper covers. Moreover certain participants in the ceremony need limp copies that can be put in their pockets and if the edition were cased in stiff boards, special copies would be needed for them.
Copy for the Ceremonies was provided by the Earl Marshal’s Office sooner then was expected (3 March 1953), amendments kept coming in until it went to press a fortnight before the coronation. The book was section-sewn and covered in buff paper, printed with the Royal Arms and the title in bronze.
At proof-stage Sir Francis Maynell suggested adding an ornamental border to frame the page and this was done with an ornament chosen by the College of Arms.
The paper was the same as that for the Form and Order of the Service. 9,000 copies were delivered on the 29 May 1953. 20 copies were cased in white Niger Morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe for the Queen and members of the Royal Family.
THE ORDER OF THE SERVICE WITH MUSIC
This book gives the words of the whole Coronation Service and the music for four voices and accompaniment to the sung parts. The music varies to some extent from one Coronation to another.
There was hesitation in HM Stationery Office about interfering in the design of the book, which is wanted officially only for the use of the choir, but finally it was decided that it should be consistent as a companion to the other two books.
Messrs. Novello were approached and were very willing to co-operate with hm Stationery Office. The Organist of Westminster Abbey, Dr (now Sir) William McKie MV O, joined in the discussion and plans were made for a rather handsomer style of typography and a larger musical notation than had been used in 1937. Sir Gerald Wollaston had again undertaken to supply a design for the covers. Later it was found that approximately a third of the music printed in 1937 for which plates existed would be repeated in 1953, and because of the great saving in time and cost to be made by using the old plates, all thought of altering the style of the music printing had to be given up. The title space, and the pages giving the Service without music were according to specifications by HM Stationery Office.
Novello’s sold this edition in various styles of binding and a miniature edition produced by photolithography. 15 copies of the Service with Music were bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe in blue Niger Morocco stamped in gold with the design by Sir Gerald Wollaston.
The Earl Marshal’s Office decided that 72 easily distinguishable kinds of cards of admission to the ceremony must be printed, all with plans of the Abbey and its approaches on the back.
All the tickets are printed in white board, gilt-edged and embossed with the crown in bronze; the distinction between the 72 kinds is made by index letters and numbers and bands, borders or flat tints lithographed in one, two or three colours, and the wording is printed in black from type.
The plan was drawn by HM Stationery Office and many amendments were made to it before it was finally approved by The Earl Marshal and the Commissioner of Police. It is printed in reverse in one colour and over-printed with route-lines and directions in black.
The number printed was 12,126 of which only some 7,000 were used, Harrison & Sons were given the order on 25 March 1953, the work was much complicated by changes in the seating arrangements and the delivery was completed on the 16 May 1953.
The guest’s names were written by a scribe of the College of Arms.
A sign of the times was Background to the Coronation, issued by the Earl Marshal for the use of the press. It was meant more particularly for foreign journalists, a compendium of facts and history about the Monarchy, the Royal Family, the Coronation ceremony, the chief figures in it, its organisation and the official and semi-official functions and fixtures occasioned by the Coronation of 1953. It was issued in loose-leaf binders, so the supplements could be inserted to keep it up to date.
This is the tale of printing for those who were present at the ceremony. There is a longer tale of jobbing for regulating access to the Abbey, admission to Government stands along the route of the procession, passes to permit penetration of the areas of London affected by it and the partaking of officially provided refreshments. The Lord Great Chamberlain’s passes for the Palace of Westminster and its buffets, with his signature in flourished chancery hand, and that of the Serjeant-at-Arms for the House of Commons, in red and bronze, were handsome pieces of work. A pocketable illustrated guide booklet to Westminster School was printed for the Queen’s guests at lunch in Ashburnham House. For the first time every one of these jobs was handled by a professional typographer, and the collection in the albums of the College of Arms and HMSO is, one feels on the whole, graceful in form and pleasant in colour, and a better set of precedents then was ever there before.
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David Napthine handled much of the design work for the 1953 Coronation and in his own chapter in From Layout to Graphic Design he touched, modestly, on his own contribution.
During the time of designing and printing for the Coronation, H [Harry Carter] had overall design responsibility. He worked on the rubricated Form and Order of the Service with its noble text set in 24pt Perpetua roman throughout). Sir Francis Meynell advised. I liaised with the Earl Marshal’s Office and did the bulk of the general typography. Joan Hassall (daughter of John Hassall), noted for her wood engravings, was asked by Sir Francis to do the decorative work on the Coronation invitation card (printed in John Bell type) and visited us in the studio. I went with H to see Sir F M at his Victoria office to get his blessing on what we were doing. The latter indicated his choice of a Monotype printer’s flower border to go round the text pages of the Order of Ceremony. Later the Speaker, when Sir F M had to meet him for final overall approval, insisted on the propriety of his designation appearing larger than those of the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee and the Leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill, involving a last minute flurry at press.
Earlier the Earl Marshal quaintly referred to the Times New Roman type which we were using for the Coronation general printing as ‘Times Old Roman’, which amused H. The Duke refused to comply with HMSO’s rule requiring a separate printing demand for each main item produced. HMSO had to agree to the unprecedented arrangement of a single printing demand covering the whole of the Coronation printing. Later, at the time of the Investiture, when I had to see both the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Snowdon separately on the same day to resolve a heraldic design problem on which they could not agree (whether the heraldic supporters should or should not stand on a compartment on the cover of the Ceremonial), the Duke decided the matter by saying ‘You have to stand on something, don’t you?’
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Arthur Phillips was another early member of the design team and in this extract from his unpublished autobiography recalled the time of the Coronation.
Some time in 1950, Harry Carter confided in me that Sir Francis Meynell had slightly embarrassed the Controller by asking what action would be taken by HMSO in ‘a certain event’. It was not immediately apparent to me what the ‘event’ was likely to be and with the Korean war in progress I assumed it had some connection with war. But it transpired that Sir Francis was concerned for the printing in the event of the death of King George VI. When this did happen Carter prepared a very attractive Order of Service and later it became apparent that there would be a great deal of work to be done on printing for the Coronation.
There had been no co-ordinated design of printing for past Coronations, it was left to the Earl Marshal’s Office to deal direct with the King’s Printer, (Eyre & Spottiswoode or Harrison & Sons) or Novello for the music. HMSO was entirely responsible for the printed matter for the Coronation of Elizabeth II, although one might have expected the Central Office of Information to be involved due to its function and designing ability. HMSO was first approached in July 1952 to design letterheads for the Earl Marshall. Eighty different pieces of printed matter were ordered from this office by mid-1953, but many were in multiple sorts, there being 72 different kinds of admission cards to the Abbey lithographed in two, three or four colours, 21 different kinds of Summons to Peers and 38 different Passes.
Most of this jobwork printing was handled by David Napthine who was meticulous in the application of consistently good design principles to all these items. There were five kinds of Invitation Card with ornate decorative border engraved by Joan Hassall with the wording in Bell roman and a line of italic capitals. The wording was set and proofed and pasted up with a pull of the engraved border. One very good thing about the Layout Section was that there was virtually no jealousy in the allocation of praise to its various members of staff; but recognition for the Invitation Card did cause some amusement. H G Hyde pasted up the wording set by Laytons, but it was given some further treatment by Sid Stead in extending swash characters (top). Sid took the finished artwork to the College of Heralds and arrived at the same time as a Press Conference was in progress. As a result he got the credit with Joan Hassall for the design and dashed out to buy a quire of the Evening Standard which included the relevant paragraph.
David Napthine did get recognition for his work by receiving an invitation to the Coronation and a seat in the triforium of the Abbey, he was lucky that Moss Bros could fit him out with no notice.
There was also the award of Coronation medals; Harry was given one and two more assigned to the Layout Section. Carter called me into his office to apologise for not recommending me for the medal because he could not increase the allocation and undoubtedly Sid Stead and David Napthine were most deserving. This was perfectly justified as I had done no work on the Coronation printing, but could be considered as possibly entitled merely as one of the ‘general issue’. But the joke came a little later when a second medal turned up for Sid Stead direct from the College of Heralds, it was returned.