Eric Gill

Specimens of typefaces by Eric Gill

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Page from Gospels, 1931. Wood engravings and type design by Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (February 22, 1882 – November 17, 1940), British sculptor, typeface designer, and printmaker working mainly in engraving, and who was associated with the English Arts and Crafts movement.

Biography

Gill was born in 1882 in Brighton, Sussex (now East Sussex) and in 1897 the family moved to Chichester. Eric studied at Chichester Technical and Art School, and in 1900 moved to London to train as an architect with the practice of W.D. Caroe, specialists in ecclesiastical architecture. Frustrated with his training, he took evening classes in stone masonry at Westminster Technical Institute and in calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where Edward Johnston, creator of the London Underground typeface, became a strong influence. In 1903 he gave up his architectural training to become a calligrapher, letter-cutter and monumental mason.

In 1904 he married Ethel Hester Moore (1878–1961), and in 1907 he moved with his family to "Sopers", a house in the village of Ditchling in Sussex, which would later become the centre of an artists' community inspired by Gill. There he started producing sculpture – his first public success was Mother and Child (1912).

In 1913 he moved to Hopkin's Crank at Ditchling Common, 2 miles north of the village. In 1914 he produced sculptures for the stations of the cross in Westminster Cathedral. In the same year he met the typographer Stanley Morison. After the war, together with Hilary Pepler and Desmond Chute, Gill founded The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, where his pupils included the young David Jones, who soon began a relationship with Gill's daughter, Petra.

In 1924 he moved to Capel-y-ffin in Wales, where he set up a new workshop, to be followed by Jones and other disciples. In 1925 he designed the Perpetua typeface, with the uppercase based upon monumental Roman inscriptions, for Morison, who was working for the Monotype Corporation. This was followed by the Gill Sans typeface in 1927–30, based on the sans-serif lettering originally designed by Johnston for London Underground. In the period 1930-31 Gill designed the typeface Joanna which he used to handset his book An Essay on Typography.

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Gill Sans, Gill's most famous typeface

Gill soon tired of Capel-y-ffin, coming to feel that it had the wrong atmosphere, and also being too far from London, where most of his clients were. In 1928 he moved to Pigotts near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, where he set up a printing press and lettering workshop. He took on a number of apprentices, including David Kindersley, who in turn became a successful sculptor and engraver, and John Skelton (1923–1999), his nephew, and also noted as an important letterer and sculptor. Other apprentices included Laurie Cribb, Donald Potter and Walter Ritchie. Others in the household included Denis Tegetmeier, married to Gill's daughter Petra, and Rene Hague, married to the other daughter, Joanna. In 1932 Gill produced a group of sculptures, Prospero and Ariel, for the BBC's Broadcasting House in London. In 1937, he designed a postage stamp for the Post Office, and in 1938 produced The Creation of Adam, three bas-reliefs in stone for the League of Nations building in Geneva. During this period he was made a Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts and became a founder-member of the newly established Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. The award of RDI is the highest British award for designers.

A deeply religious man, Eric Gill published numerous essays on the relationship between art and religion. He also produced a number of erotic engravings.

Gill died in Harefield Hospital, Uxbridge, Middlesex in 1940. His headstone, on his grave near Pigotts, identifies him simply as a "stone carver".

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Nude woman reclining on a leopard skin, a graphite drawing by Gill (1928).

Pupils of Eric Gill

Gill's pupils include William Bloye, Don Potter and David Kindersley.

Typefaces

Eric Gill's types:

• Gill Sans (his most famous face and lasting legacy to typography 1927–1930)
• Perpetua (1926)
• Golden Cockerel Press Type (for the Golden Cockerel Press; 1929)
• Solus (1929),
• Joanna (based on work by Granjon; 1930– 1931)
• Aries (1932)
• Floriated Capitals (1932)
• Bunyan (1934)
• Pilgrim (recut version of Bunyan; 1953)
• Jubilee (also known as Cunard; 1934)

In his 1947–1949 redesign for Penguin Books, a project that resulted in the establishment of Penguin Composition Rules, Jan Tschichold specified use of Gill Sans for book titles, and in branding their Pelican imprint. In the 1990s, the BBC adopted Gill Sans for its wordmark and many of its on-screen television graphics.

Personal life

Gill's devout Roman Catholicism did not prevent him sexually abusing his own children, having an incestuous relationship with his sister or performing sexual acts on his dog. His personal diaries describe his sexual activity in great detail. This aspect of Gill's life was little known until publication of the 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy. Robert Speaight's earlier biography mentioned none of it.

Reputation

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Eric Gill, self portrait

As the revelations about Gill's private life resonated, there was a reassessement of his personal and artistic achievement. As his recent biographer sums up: "After the initial shock, [...] as Gill's history of adulteries, incest, and experimental connection with his dog became public knowledge in the late 1980s, the consequent reassessment of his life and art left his artistic reputation strengthened. Gill emerged as one of the twentieth century's strangest and most original controversialists, a sometimes infuriating, always arresting spokesman for man's continuing need of God in an increasingly materialistic civilization, and for intellectual vigour in an age of encroaching triviality."

Quotations

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

"That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself.

"That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. That state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God."

-- from Art Nonsense and Other Essays (1929)

First I think and then I draw my think. quoted in My time with Eric Gill by Donald Potter, 1980

Selected writings

• Gill, Eric: A Holy Tradition of Working: An Anthology of Writings, Golgonooza Press, 1983, ISBN 0-903880-30-X
• Gill, Eric: An Essay on Typography, 1931, ISBN 0-87923-762-7, ISBN 0-87923-950-6 (reprints)
• Gill, Eric: Christianity and Art, 1927
• Gill, Eric: Art, 1934
• Gill, Eric: Work and Property, 1937
• Gill, Eric: Work and Culture, 1938
• Gill, Eric: Autobiography: Quod Ore Sumpsimus, Jonathan Cape, 1940 (published posthumously) ISBN 1-870495-13-6

See also

• Typography
• Wood engraving

References

• Attwater, Donal: A Cell of Good Living, 1969
• Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Hartley & Marks: 1992. ISBN 0-88179-033-8.
• Collins, Judith: Eric Gill -- The Sculpture, 1998
• Steven Corey and Julia MacKenzie (editors) -- Eric Gill: A Bibliography, St Paul's Bibliographies, 1991, ISBN 0-906795-53-2
• Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to OpenType. Hartley & Marks: 2006. ISBN 0881792101
• Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
• Gill, Cecil, Warde & Kindersley; The Life and Works of Eric Gill, 1968
• Evan Gill and David Peace (editors) -- Eric Gill: The Inscriptions, Herbert Press, 1994, ISBN 1-871569-66-4
• Holliday, Peter: Eric Gill in Ditchling, Oak Knoll Press, ISBN 1-58456-075-4
• Kindserley, David. Mr. Eric Gill: Further Thoughts by an Apprentice. Cardozo Kindersley Editions: 1967, 1982. ISBN 0950194654
• MacCarthy, Fiona: Eric Gill, Faber & Faber, 1989, ISBN 0-571-14302-4
• Skelton, Christopher, Editor: Eric Gill -- The Engravings, 1983
• Speaight, Robert: Life of Eric Gill, 1966
• Thorp, Joseph: Eric Gill, 1929
• Yorke, Malcolm: Eric Gill -- Man of Flesh and Spirit, 1981
• Robert Harling: "The letter forms and type designs of Eric Gill", 1976, ISBN 0-903696-04-5
• Jonathan Miles: Eric Gill & David Jones at Capel-y-ffin, 1992, Poetry Wales Press, ISBN 1-85411-051-9

External links

• Examples of Gill's work at the Tate Gallery.
• Identifont biography
• Article on Gill's private life in relation to his work by Fiona MacCarthy
• MacCarthy article on her discovery and publication of the details of Gill's sexual activity
• Learning to Live With Eric Gill Article on the relationship of Gill's private life to his art, by Clifford Longley
• Join us to learn more about Eric Gill and the Guild The Eric Gill Society