Letters of Eric Gill

1947

Brasch Collection NB497 G55 A3 1947

London: Jonathan Cape

‘If the Autobiography might be compared to a blueprint or drawings of plans and elevations, these letters are sketches done on the site, at various times of the day and in all weathers. If in the former we are shown the positions and dimensions of door-jambs and window-frames and the lie of walls, in the latter we see that there are roses round the door, that this window-glass is broken, that that wall was hardly built.’ So wrote David Jones, (1895–1974), the British painter and poet, in his 1948 review of this volume of letters, edited by Walter Shewring. Jones joined Gill’s Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, Sussex in 1922, but not as a guild member. Gill’s colourful calligraphic letter to Jones could no doubt be matched by the latter’s own (now well-known) calligraphic masterpieces, which are termed ‘painted inscriptions’.