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Finding Aid for the Eric Gill Archive, 1887-2003
(bulk 1905-1940)
MS
Gill
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Title: Eric Gill Archive
Date (inclusive): 1887-2003 (bulk 1905-1940)
Collection number: MS
Gill
Creator:
William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
Extent:
76.2 linear feet, 14 flat files, 9 tubes,
8 items
Repository:
University of California, Los Angeles. Library.
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Los Angeles, California 90095-1490
Abstract: This collection of materials accumulated by the
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library documents the personal and artistic
development and activities of Eric Gill, a twentieth-century English
stone-cutter, sculptor, artist, author, typographer/type designer,
printer, book illustrator; and champion of social reforms. The collection
includes manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, legal and financial
documents, scrapbooks, clippings, periodicals, photographs, Gill's books
and library, as well as several printing items and a substantial amount of
art.
Physical location: William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library.
Language:
English.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts
must be submitted in writing to the Librarian. Permission for publication
is given on behalf of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library as the
owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
[Identification of item], Collection on Eric Gill, MS Gill, William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
The Clark's first Director, Lawrence Clark Powell, began collecting
Eric Gill's art and manuscripts in the late 1940s and 1950s. He arranged
with a London bookseller to act as liaison with the Gill family, which
eventually designated the Clark to be the major repository of manuscripts
and correspondence. Along with the manuscripts came four hundred volumes
from the Gill's library as well as six volumes of scrapbooks and twenty
folders of press clippings. The Clark also acquired Gill's own file of
magazines and journals with his essays, articles and other contributions.
Additional material has since been acquired by the Clark Library,
including a related collection of ephemera, insurance documents and
publisher's contracts and art items.
In early 2002 the Delmas Foundation provided grant funding to the Clark
to arrange its archival collection on Eric Gill. An Assistant Librarian
was hired to organize, rehouse and inventory the collection as well as to
create an online finding aid in EAD for the Online Archive of California
(OAC).
Processed by: Jennifer Alcoset, January 2004
Son of a non-conformist minister, one of twelve children, Eric Gill was
born in Brighton in 1882 and brought up in Chichester, where he attended
art school and learned the rudiments of drawing. At the age of eighteen he
went to London to work in an architect's office, a prosperous firm
specializing in church buildings. Here he acquired more of a draftsman's
skills, although not entirely in sympathy with modern building methods,
which Gill believed to favor the designer and contractor at the expense of
the craftsman.
The Arts and Crafts movement, then in its first flowering, offered an
exciting alternative to the "wage slavery" of the office as well as the
opportunity to make his living independently. Instead of studying
architecture in the evenings, Gill learned the art of carving inscriptions
in stone. He attended classes in masonry at the Westminster Technical
School and lettering at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, both
schools specializing in practical, hands-on instruction in materials and
methods. His teacher at the Central School was Edward Johnston, an expert
calligrapher and an eloquent proponent of Arts and Crafts techniques. Gill
not only shared Johnston's rooms for a few years, but even contributed a
chapter to Johnston's Writing & Illuminating & Lettering, still a standard
text on penmanship. By 1904 Gill was self-employed, supporting himself and
his wife by carving lettering on public buildings for architects as well
as tombstones and memorial tablets for private clients.
At this time, Gill's interest in art, religion, and politics were
developing in diverse, often contradictory directions. His first
experiments in sculpture won the approval of such influential artists and
critics as Augustus John, Jacob Epstein, Roger Fry, and William
Rothenstein. They admired the primitive vigor of his work and also its
technical polish, a combination that prompted flattering comparisons with
archaic sculpture on one hand and the newly fashionable Post-Impressionist
art on the other. A German patron introduced him to Aristide Maillol,
hoping the two artists would work together and learn from one another.
During a brief and intense friendship with Jacob Epstein, he collaborated
on the monument for Oscar Wilde and joined in wild plans to build a
modernist Stonehenge in the Sussex countryside. On a much smaller scale,
Gill carved in Hoptonwood stone a Golden Calf, originally intended for a
London cabaret but eventually loaned to Roger Fry for the Second
Post-Impressionist exhibition, where it was surrounded by paintings of
Picasso, Matisse and Cézanne.
Gill never quite renounced his heritage in the Arts and Crafts or the
patronage of the London art world, but he adamantly refused to be
identified simply as a craftsman or an artist. He constantly sought other
labels, other ways to fix a special place for himself in a society that he
believed to be oppressive and unjust. He had a disputatious streak, a
craving to be heard, a compulsive urge to take sides on the social issues
of his day that could be satisfied only by sampling, asserting, and
rejecting a profusion of political and religious allegiances. He dabbled
in socialism, attended meetings of the Fabian Society, and spoke
vociferously against the factory system. But he soon wearied of the
discipline and obligations of political action, left London, and joined a
community of craftsmen in Ditchling, Sussex. While at Ditchling, he and
his wife converted to Catholicism, moved to another part of the village,
and founded there a reconstituted religious community linked with the
Dominican order. The Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic operated on
Distributist rather than socialist principles, extolling the sanctity of
individual labor and advocating a return to private property and a
self-sufficient rural economy. Some members of the Guild helped Gill in
the studio, others tended livestock and tilled gardens.
Sculpture continued to occupy Gill during the Ditchling period
(1907-1924) - perhaps most importantly the Stations of the Cross at
Westminster Cathedral and the War Memorial at Leeds University - but at
the same time Gill mastered other skills and developed other sources of
income. His lettering was in great demand not just for stone inscriptions,
but also for painted signs and printing, particularly buildings, title
pages, and chapter headings. Characteristically, Gill learned wood
engraving to have better control over how his lettering was printed. Once
he became proficient with boxwood and graver, he began to experiment with
printmaking and book illustration, and in turn tried his hand at the
handpress, learning the first principles of typography and composition.
The Guild founded its own private press, more to make a political than an
artistic statement, yet its rudely printed broadsides and pamphlets are
fetchingly illustrated with some of Gill's first engravings.
In 1924 Gill moved his family and studio to a deserted, half-ruined
monastery in South Wales, having quit the Ditchling community in a dispute
over finances. Although remote, inconvenient, and uncomfortable, the
monastery of Capel-y-ffin provided a perfect setting for Gill to build his
ideal religious community without unwelcome publicity or intrusions from
the outside world. He found a new market for his wood engravings in the
Golden Cockerel Press, publisher of far more ambitious books than the
Guild, with higher standards of presswork, better design, and a more
sophisticated clientele, willing and able to pay handsomely for
sumptuously illustrated books. Increasingly intrigued by typography and
its possibilities for independent self-expression, Gill not only catered
to book collectors and bibliophiles but also to trade printers through the
Monotype Corporation, which commissioned from him a series of
distinguished typefaces. This lucrative relationship seems to have
overcome his aversion for industrial capitalism, even though he was being
paid by businessmen to design types for machine composition - and on
retainer at that. He also put his business in sculpture on a sound
financial footing by having his work regularly exhibited at the Goupil
Gallery in London. Assured of steady sales, he undertook one of his
largest, most impressive, and highly regarded carvings, Mankind, now at
the Tate Gallery. Some critics consider it a companion piece to the
earlier Mulier at UCLA, which is equally monumental if not a bit
portentous and cold.
As his fame and business grew, so did the demands on his facilities,
time, and energy. Gill brought his family closer to London in 1928,
settling at Pigotts, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in a commodious
red-brick farmhouse with outbuildings providing ample space for studios,
cottages, and a chapel. This too was intended to be a community of
craftsmen, though now defined more as employees and family members than as
adherents of a religious or political doctrine. Nevertheless Gill still
attracted pupils, disciples, and pilgrims, who came to learn from the
master craftsman, to share in his sense of high purposefulness, and to
observe how he and his associates managed to live and work together apart
from modern society.
In 1929 Gill reached the highpoint of his career: several major
monographs appeared on his sculpture; a complete collection of his
engravings was published in a lavishly printed limited edition; and a
selection of his polemical essays was printed at his own press
inaugurating a typeface of his own design. Within a year he suffered a
breakdown from overwork. Although he never fully recovered, he remained
formidably busy during the rest of his life. He designed and built a
church, noteworthy for its stark interior and the central placement of its
altar, a practical and symbolic expression of his views on liturgy. He
carved massive public sculptures for the headquarters of BBC and of the
London Underground. The British government selected him to carve huge
panels for the League of Nations building in Geneva. Along with these
prestigious commissions came more honors: he was elected an Honorary
Associate of the Institute of British Architects, and Associate of the
Royal Academy, and one of the first Royal Designers for Industry. Despite
failing health, he wrote his Autobiography during 1940 and kept hard at
work to the very end. While awaiting a minor operation, he corrected
proofs of the Autobiography, sketched out some book illustrations, started
a translation of the Psalms, kept up his accounts, and wrote the last
entries in his voluminous diaries. Unexpectedly the surgery failed, and he
died on November 17, 1940 at the age of fifty-eight.
When he died in 1940, he left behind more than a thousand engravings;
at least one hundred and fifty books with his illustrations; eleven
different printing types; and countless sculptures and inscriptions on
city buildings, Catholic churches, and public squares throughout England.
He harbored passionate convictions on religion, politics, and art, which
he expressed in more than two hundred articles and more than fifty books.
In his own day he was probably best known for his sculpture, his Stations
of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral, his controversial War Memorial at
Leeds University, and the monumental relief panels commissioned by the
British government for the League of Nations building in Geneva. Trained
by the distinguished calligrapher Edward Johnston, Gill developed an
extraordinary skill in lettering. His vigorous sans-serif lettering is
still used for tabular matter, signage, and advertising, and his elegant
Perpetua has long been a favorite display face for fine printing.
Gill's fame nowadays rests on fine printing. The private press movement
of his day opened a natural market for his many skills, not just
lettering, but also book illustration and book design. His Four Gospels
published by the Golden Cockerel Press in 1931 is considered a modern
masterpiece, joining his wood-engraved illustrations, his decorative
lettering, and a specially designed typeface in an uncanny union of image
and text. A bitter foe of mass production and industrialized society, Gill
eagerly embraced the ideals of hand craftsmanship propounded by John
Ruskin and practiced by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. Gill
collaborated with the Golden Cockerel Press on several important books and
also founded his own printing business, intended to be an outright
commercial venture. Although not exactly a private press, the firm of
Hague & Gill resembles the modern equivalent in that it bore its owner's
highly individual stamp in matters of editorial policy, manufacturing, and
design. Gill retained complete artistic control over publications such as
his Twenty-Five typefaces. The UCLA Library has published an annotated
checklist of Hague & Gill imprints, based on the Clark holdings and
business records.
This collection of material accumulated by the Clark Library documents
the personal and artistic development and activities of Eric Gill, a
twentieth-century English stone-cutter, sculptor, artist, author,
typographer/type designer, printer, book illustrator; and champion of
social reforms. The collection includes manuscripts, diaries,
correspondence, legal and financial documents, scrapbooks, clippings,
periodicals, photographs, Gill's books and library, as well as several
original printing items and a substantial amount of art.
The collection is organized in ten series:
Series 1. Personal papers, 1895-1982 inclusive and undated, 3.6 linear
feet
Series 2. Professional papers, 1905-1945 inclusive and undated, 16.65
linear feet
Series 3. Art and artifacts, 1887-1940 inclusive and undated, 14 flat
files, 9 tubes, 15 linear feet, 8 items
Series 4. Correspondence, 1913-1940 inclusive and undated, 12 linear
feet
Series 5. Photographs 1908-1969 inclusive and undated, 6 linear feet
Series 6. Gill's books and library
Series 7. Legal and financial documents, 1900-1984 inclusive and
undated, 4.66 linear feet
Series 8. Printed material, 1909-2003 inclusive and undated, 16.29
linear feet
Series 9. Topical material, 1893-1967 inclusive and undated, 1.5 linear
feet
Series 10. Addenda (2008): Correspondence with David Hennessy and Dorothy Day, with related materials, 1935-1953 inclusive
and undated, .5 linear feet.