Eric Gill



Eric Gill was born in Brighton, England, 1882-1940. British stone carver, wood engraver, essayist and type designer. Student of Johnston. Influential British type designer who for a while worked for the Golden Cockerell Press in London. The text book Eric Gill (Fiona McCarthy, Faber and Faber Ltd) describes his life. Publishers Weekly writes: An English artist-craftsman in the tradition of William Morris, Eric Gill (1882-1940) exemplifies the search for a lifestyle to heal the split between work and leisure, art and industry. He is remembered today for his fine engravings and stone carvings, his legendary typefaces and book designs for the Golden Cockerel Press. Yet there was another side to the man, downplayed by previous biographers: a fervent convert to Catholicism and leader of three Catholic arts-and-crafts communes, Gill had a hyperactive libido which extended to incest with his sisters and daughters, as well as numerous extramarital affairs, according to British writer MacCarthy. He rationalized his penile acrobatics by inventing a bizarre pseudoreligious theory. In MacCarthy's candid portrait, Gill, who preserved the outward image of a devout father-figure, was neither saint nor humbug, but a highly sexed creative artist trapped by his Victorian concept of masculinity. This charismatic firebrand was a renegade Fabian socialist, a bohemian friend of Augustus John and Bertrand Russell. His adventurous life, as re-created in this beautifully written, absorbing biography, is disturbingly relevant to our time. A follow-up article by McCarthy in The Guardian, 2006. Canicopulus Script (1989, Barry Deck) is a font named to remember one of Eric Gill's favorite extracurricular activities. Quote: There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools. FontShop link. Linotype link.

Author of An Essay on Typography (1931, revised in 1936). For a French edition, see Eric Gill Un Essai sur la Typographie (Boris Donné and Patricia Menay, Ypsilon Editeur, 2011).

His typefaces include

Klingspor link.