Mudlark donates rare Doves Type to Emery Walker’s House in Hammersmith

Jason Sandy donating Doves Type to curator Taryn Power (with Doves Bible) at Emery Walker’s House 2026. © Lucinda MacPherson

A Chiswick mudlark has donated 50 pieces of one of the most famous lost typefaces in British printing history to the trust that runs 7 Hammersmith Terrace, the former home of the men who created it.

Jason Sandy recovered the Doves Type from the Thames foreshore beneath Hammersmith Bridge during an unusually low tide in September 2025. He has given the haul to Emery Walker’s House, the museum at the former home of typeface co-creators Sir Emery Walker and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson.

The Doves Type was designed in 1900 for the Doves Press, the printing partnership run by Walker and Cobden-Sanderson. It is regarded as one of the finest typefaces of the Arts and Crafts movement. After the two men fell out in 1909, Cobden-Sanderson resolved that Walker would never get his hands on the type.

Between 1916 and 1917 he made a series of nighttime trips to Hammersmith Bridge and threw more than a ton of metal type and matrices into the river. The typeface was believed lost until fragments started turning up on the foreshore nearly a century later.

Doves Type found by Jason Sandy. © Jason Sandy

Sandy, a licensed mudlark, said he was on the foreshore at low tide, around 12.30am, when he spotted the type.

‘Following the recent removal of Wet Wipe Island nearby, the tide dropped lower than expected, and many pieces of the illusive Doves Type appeared,’ he said. ‘As I was crawling on my hands and knees, I picked up 41 pieces of metal type illuminated by my headtorch.’

He had not noticed that someone on the bridge above was watching him. A short time later, three police cars arrived and an officer came down the riverbank to ask what he was doing. Hammersmith Bridge has been bombed three times by the IRA between 1939 and 2000 and has been closed to vehicular traffic since 2019 because of structural problems.

A mudlarker by the Thames with Hammersmith Bridge in background. © Lucinda MacPherson

‘After explaining to the police officer that I am a mudlark with a license from the Port of London Authority, I showed him the Doves Type I had found and told him the intriguing story about them,’ Sandy said. ‘The kind police officer smiled, realising I was doing nothing mischievous, and asked me a few queries about the type before escorting me off the foreshore and letting me go.’

The donation of 50 pieces is one of the largest recent contributions of Doves Type to the historical record. Sandy is the author of Mudlarks: Treasures from the Thames and co-author of Thames Mudlarking: Searching for London’s Lost Treasures.

Emery Walker’s House, which has one of the most intact Arts and Crafts interiors in the country, is open by pre-booked guided tour only at emerywalker.org.uk/visit