Cranbrook Press Desk

This lectern or standing desk was used by employees of George Booth's small Arts and Crafts printing workshop, Cranbrook Press. The Press produced fine hand-printed books, sometimes enhanced by illuminations. Beneath the hinged lid of the lectern hides a storage space, as well as two charts explaining how to select colored inks for printing. The sturdy, lathe-turned legs of the lectern recall English furniture of the seventeenth century, or Jacobean, style.

George Booth established Cranbrook Press in emulation of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, an Arts and Crafts press that revived medieval hand printing for the modern age. In 1900, a suite of attic rooms over the newspaper offices were redecorated in a manner evocative of a preindustrial workshop, with half-timbered walls, small-paned windows, and sturdy wooden furniture designed by George Booth. There, a small staff worked alongside George Booth to design, print, and bind new editions of classic works.

Cranbrook Press remained in operation only from 1900 to 1902. However, both the presses themselves and much of the furniture from the original site eventually migrated to the Cranbrook Campus, where they saw new uses at both the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Kingswood School for Girls.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
September 2024