Whitespace in
The Well at the World's End
Written by William Morris and printed in 1896, The Well at the World's End is a medieval romance designed in the style of Thomas Malory. The ornamentation was designed by Morris, and the illustrations are woodcuts created by Edward Burne-Jones.
01
Whitespace
William Morris’ The Well at World’s End contains multiple “books.” At the beginning of each book, there is a two-page spread containing an illustration on one of the pages and thick illustrated borders on both pages. These title pages are examples of pictorial whitespace: since they are printed in black and white, all of the shading in the illustrations is reliant on whitespace.
The title pages remove some textual whitespace in favor of dense illustrations. For instance, the leading words on the title pages often have their letters nested within one another, and on many of the two-page spreads, the left side of the page will contain a caption for the image, where the text is “pierced” by the illustrations surrounding it.
For each chapter within each book, there are detailed illustrations in the margins, though they are not solid as they are on the title pages. There are also many other decorative elements included in the margins throughout the book. These border elements, unlike the illustrations in the title page, do not overlap the text.
02
Illustrations
The iconic illustrations are relevant to the narrative content of the story, however the borders are not and simply contain depictions of nature. The borders are very dense, and in fact the form of the leaves is defined by the white space. Instead of inking the outlines for the plants, as is the case in the chapter ornamentation above, the title pages' borders are completely filled in except for the leaves.
