Florence Kate Kingsford, Lady Cockerell, known variously as Florence Kingsford and Kate Cockerell, was a British illustrator and calligrapher who specialized in creating illuminated manuscripts. She worked with the Ashendene Press, the writer Olive Schreiner, and the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, among others. She is considered a leading illuminator of the British Arts and Crafts movement, with one authority holding that her originality as an illuminator was greater even than that of William Morris. She also designed some sets and costumes for opera and ballet.

The Ashendene Press was a small private press founded by St John Hornby (1867–1946). It operated from 1895 to 1915 in Chelsea, London and was revived after the war in 1920. The press closed in 1935. Its peers included the Kelmscott Press and the Doves Press. Hornby became friends with William Morris and Emery Walker, who helped inspire his work. These three presses were part of a "revival of fine printing" that focused on treating bookmaking as fine art. The Ashendene Press was famous for producing high-quality works by Dante. Ashendene books had excellent bindings and focused more on pleasure than reform than the other private presses of the time, though one review claims that the Ashendene Press was the most successful private press in recapturing the essence of fifteenth-century printing. Ashendene books were carefully printed with large margins, and despite their lack of extravagant decoration, they were considered spectacular works of art. Two original typefaces were created for the Ashendene Press: Subiaco and Ptolemy. They were known for handwritten, colored initials by Graily Hewitt. The press' main customers were book collectors who paid for a subscription for Ashendene books.