Customer Reviews

Eric Gill: The Engravings

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Perhaps your font collection includes Gill Sans, or even less familiar typefaces like Perpetua and Joanna. Eric Gill may be best known as the artist who created them. His self-chosen epitaph describes him as "stone carver," however, he wrote brilliantly on many topics, and engraved hundreds of images illustrating Chaucer, religious subjects, and many others.

Gill seems hard to pin down. He was devoutly religious, the kind of man whose daily work as a creative artist echoed the Creator in whose image he was made. A sensualist too, he never tired of womanly beauty or of ecstasy in procreation - it almost seems a holy duty to explore all the joy there is to be had in God's handiwork. Both of these themes come out strongly through these thousand-plu graphic works. His "stations of the cross", his many Madonnas, all attest to his faith. They can not, however, be separated from his celebrations of feminine charm, and even depictions of joyful coitus.

Likewise, his style combines disparate elements to create a unique visual experience. Much of this work came from the time when Art Nouveau gave way to Art Deco, and combines elements of both. The Nouveau lent sensual grace and even romance to his drawings, which applied them to the plain geometries and structures of the later style. The results adorn books and bookplates, invitations, and even headstones - seemingly every purpose to which graphic art can be put.

The more I learn about Gill, the more the man and his work fascinate me. No other artist I know so perfectly blends spirit and animal nature, in his art, his writing, and his life as a whole.

-- wiredweird