Eric Gill: Lust for Letter & Line

(Paperback)

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Eric Gill (1882-1940) is one of the twentieth century's most controversial artists. This illustrated introduction focuses on the clarity of Gill's drawn and cut line. It explores his genius as a letter cutter, wood engraver, sculptor and typographer in the light of his refined finished drawings and preparatory sketches. Like all modernists of the early twentieth-century, he used stylised form, explicit sexuality and the influence of other cultures to position himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. An outsider and a radical, Gill nevertheless became one the establishment's favourite artists, with his patrons including the Catholic Church, the Lord Chancellor's office, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Mint, the London Underground, the BBC, the Post Office and the League of Nations. The authors illuminate here the quality, complexities and contradictions of Gill's fascinating life and art.

Author Bio

Ruth Cribb is an exhibition coordinator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and is writing her PhD thesis on Eric Gill's working practices at the University of Brighton. Joe Cribb is the former Keeper of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, where he worked for forty years as a curator of Asian coins and currencies. He has published many articles on Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian, and Kidarite coins and on the processes of numismatic research. In 1997 he was awarded the Ikuo Hirayama Silk Road Art and Archaeology prize, in 1999 the Royal Numismatic Society's medal, and in 2008 the American Numismatic Society's Archer M. Huntington Medal. He was President of the Royal Numismatic Society 2005-2010, and has been Secretary General of the Oriental Numismatic Society since 2011.