16 July 2012

The Anglican Aesthetic in Printing

Anglican Patrimony: The Proper Look of Liturgical Books

D.B. Updike's Standard Book of Common Prayer, 1928, is one of the high water marks in the printing and crafting of Anglican liturgical books.  He managed to take the tradition as it stood and advance it to a new place of excellence.  This is the Anglican method in short.  I have come to believe that the experimentation in typesetting that began with the trial orders of service has led the Anglican Churches down the typographical and book-crafting equivalent of a spiritual dead end.  I would advocate for returning to Updike's 'Standard' as a starting  point and working with Updike's 'Standard Book of Common Prayer' as a template for what a liturgical orders in the Anglican tradition should look like:



My readers may be interested in D.B. Updike's essay on liturgical printing which may be found here.

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