#ericgill

Divine Lovers, Eric Gill, 1922, HAM: Sculpture

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Size: 7.9 x 6 cm (3 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.) Medium: Boxwood

Madonna and Child, Eric Gill, 1925, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Henry S. Bowers

Proposed Statue of St. Michael for St. Patrick's Church, Dumbarton by Eric Gill, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Drawings and Prints

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1970 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Graphite and watercolor

Two Studies of a Reclining Female Nude, Eric Gill, 1926, Harvard Art Museums: Drawings

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Grenville L. Winthrop, Class of 1886 Size: 31.1 x 27 cm (12 1/4 x 10 5/8 in.) Medium: Graphite and brown chalk

Eric Gill’s second edition of his book, An Essay on Typography, was published in 1936 and is part of our Leuba Collection. His specific theme is “typography as it is affected by the conditions of the year 1931.” What he means by that is in 1931 the clash between industrialism and handcrafting methods was coming to a head in the world of presses and printing. Gill’s book offers principles on “the making of letters and the making of books” in order to emphasize the fluidity of the alphabet as we know it.

Many of the seemingly inexplicable standards we have for alphabet letters today come from the history of the physical methods of writing, especially the change to writing on paper. For example, “upper case” letters and “lower case” letters were once one and the same. Gill demonstrates how the Roman letter “A” evolved into “a.” The reason for this is that the two strokes of “a” were easier and faster to write on paper than the three-stroke “A.”

Another case he brings to our attention is that of serifs and sans-serifs. Serifs were a hold-over from the times when words were chiseled into stone or wax (because they provided clean lines to the letters), but it was bothersome to add serifs on every letter when writing by hand. However, a new twist occurred in typography history. With the invention not only of movable type, but also word processing software, serifs are now as easy to use as sans-serif fonts. Now the decision to use one or the other is merely a matter of taste, design, and readability.

“Gothic” lettering is today seen as a fancy font that one rarely uses. However, Gill points out that what we think of as gothic lettering just used to be the normal way to write letters. When writing was chiseled onto stone, the craftsmen found the easiest way to write was in the “gothic” style. After writing transitioned to paper though, people continued to use the gothic letters because they were the only type of letters they had been exposed to, and their shapes were natural in their eyes. They were simply copying the only letters they had ever seen.

Over the centuries the shape of letters has changed dramatically, not only because of the ease of holding a pen rather than a chisel, but also because writing practices began to favor standardization, and letter “type” stopped imitating handwriting styles. This is why we type in fonts that would be inefficient to write by hand. Gill acknowledges that we have developed “normal” styles of lettering, but encourages typography enthusiasts to be creative with their lettering (without being absurd).

-Lauren Galloway, student employee

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