As a leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris rebelled against the harsh utilitarianism of the machine age. He sought a solution in the return to the methods and the materials of the fifteenth century, and to designs he hoped would convey the flavor of that age. In his effort to revive the art of hand-press printing and to elevate the humble beauty of the hand-made object, Morris produced one of the great books in the history of printing--the Kelmscott Chaucer. All aspects of this book's design and production refer back to the characteristics of the medieval manuscript. The Gothic typeface, the use of margins, the decorated initials and borders, and even the quality of the paper speak to an earlier sensibility. The densely patterned marginal motifs seen here in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, mimic the patterned wallpapers which Morris also popularized.