Eric Gill

A gorgeous new edition of Fiona MacCarthy's ground-breaking biography of the artist-craftsman, typographer, and lettercutter, master wood-engraver, and sculptor: Eric Gill. 'Fascinating on the work and fair to the man; a brilliant biography.' Independent 'Scrupulous and sensitive . . . A wise and foolish English eccentric in full glory.' Observer 'Full of insight and interest . . . A considerable addition to modern biography.' Times Eric Gill was the greatest English artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a typographer and lettercutter of genius and a master in the art of sculpture and wood-engraving. He was a devoted family man and key figure in three Catholic art and craft communities: yet he also believed in complete sexual freedom. In her controversial, landmark biography, originally published in 1989, celebrated biographer Fiona MacCarthy delves into the complex, dark, and contradictory sides of the man and the artist for the first time - and the result is his definitive portrait.

A gorgeous new edition of Fiona MacCarthy's ground-breaking biography of the artist- craftsman, typographer, and lettercutter, master wood-engraver, and sculptor: Eric Gill. 'Fascinating on the work and fair to the man; a brilliant biography.' Independent 'Scrupulous and sensitive . . . A wise and foolish English eccentric in full glory.' Observer 'Full of insight and interest . . . A considerable addition to modern biography.' Times Eric Gill was the greatest English artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a typographer and lettercutter of genius and a master in the art of sculpture and wood-engraving. He was a devoted family man and key figure in three Catholic art and craft communities: yet he also believed in complete sexual freedom. In her controversial, landmark biography, originally published in 1989, celebrated biographer Fiona MacCarthy delves into the complex, dark, and contradictory sides of the man and the artist for the first time - and the result is his definitive portrait.

Eric Gill (1882-1940) is well known as a sculptor, wood and stone carver, letter, engraver, typeface designer, and graphic artist. But he was also a radical religious and social philosopher-a Christian revolutionary-for whom "life was more than art," because it was the highest art, the art of being human. Thus his interests were never theoretical and his view of life was holistic, involving the whole person in a unity of art, work and spiritual values. A convert to Catholicism in 1913, Gill brought to the movement of social and aesthetic renewal founded by Ruskin and William Morris a sensibility sharpened both by Non-conformism and by the enthusiastic acceptance of Thomism. After World War I, Gill helped create the Ditching Guild, and independent society of Roman Catholics bound together by common faith and common ideas about work and human society. In 1924, Gill moved with his family and a few friends, now under the rule of third-order Dominicans, to Capel-y-ffin, in South Wales. Here the task of integrating human work and religious life in a craft community continued, and here, too, Gill began to write, at first short pieces, then longer essays. In 1928, he moved back to Buckinghamshire, where he lived until his death. A Holy Tradition of Working is an anthology drawn from the full prophetic range of Gill's concerns. The topics covered include: First Things; What is Man?; What is Art?; The Four Causes; Of Work and Responsibility; Of Beauty; Of Imagination; Property, Ownership and Holy Poverty; and A Vision of Normal Society. Brian Keeble writes "There can be no mistaking the directional impulse in Gill's thought; it is heavenward, Not so much a heaven 'up there' as one with a more local habitation; the kingdom of heaven within which is the kingdom proper to man, that is, man the maker, one who is uniquely fitted, being created in His image, to 'collaborate with God'..."

"This original collection gathers the finest woodcuts of one of the most creative and prolific English artists of the early 20th century. Ranging from the religious to the erotic, featured designs include images inspired by The Song of Songs, The Canterbury Tales, and The Four Gospels. A feast for the eyes and an important and accessible reference. "--

When the prolific master artist-craftsman Eric Gill turned his talents to inscriptional lettering, he created some of the most elegant monuments known. All 900 are catalogued here, from his first sonte inscription in 1901 to his design for his own gravestone in 1940.

An Essay on Typography was first published in 1931, instantly recognized as a classic, and has long been unavailable. It represents Gill at his best: opinionated, fustian, and consistently humane. It is his only major work on typography and remains indispensable for anyone interested in the art of letter forms and the presentation of graphic information. This manifesto, however, is not only about letters "š€š" their form, fit, and function "š€š" but also about man's role in an industrial society. As Gill wrote later, it was his chief object "to describe two worlds "š€š" that of industrialism and that of the human workman "š€š" and to define their limits." His thinking about type is still provocative. Here are the seeds of modern advertising: unjustified lines, tight word and letter spacing, ample leading. Here is vintage Gill, as polemical as he is practical, as much concerned about the soul of man as the work of man; as much obsessed by the ends as by the means.

Eric Gill is perhaps the greatest English artist-craftsman of the twentieth century. His most celebrated achievements were sculptures in stone and wood ("Prospero and Ariel" on Broadcasting House; the "Stations of the Cross" in Westminster Cathedral). Malcolm Yorke reassesses this cranky, eccentric but vulnerable and modest man and illustrates his life and work with over 100 examples of Gill’s engravings, sculptures and erotic drawings.