My research focuses on the Kelmscott Chaucer facsimile preserved in the special collections of Bartle Library. The black-and-white palette of the codex is a rupture in the “unity”, which, though incoherent with other lavish decorative elements, coheres with the heterogeneous Chaucer text and manuscript tradition. This heterogeneity that demonstrates Morris’s reliance on medieval examples for his utopian conception of Book arts and their manufacture, however, is visible only to those who are familiar with medieval manuscripts. Beholders without experience thereof would be too habituated to mass-produced books to detect the unusual palette. With its covertly heterogeneous decoration that conveys manuscript tradition accessible only to a select audience, the Kelmscott Chaucer, contrary to many scholars’ assumptions, implicitly challenges Morris’s socialist utopia that emphasizes equality. My research also attends to the rough-edged paper of the facsimile, comparing the paper with that Morrison originally commissioned. The comparison sheds light on a utopian attempt within a dystopia: what and how facsimiles can preserve most tangibly and efficiently despite the inevitable material compromise.