|
|
 reating a series of elegant, distinctive typefaces for the Golden Cockerel Press marked a dramatic turning point in the prodigious career of Eric Gill. Before starting the project in 1929, Gill had already earned a wide reputation in England as a sculptor, stonecutter and wood-engraverãand also as a controversial socialist, pacifist and liberal Catholic convert. The Golden Cockerel typefaces, commissioned specifically for a special edition of the Four Gospels were his first efforts as a full-fledged type designer. Previously, with the encouragement of Stanley Morison at Monotype, he had provided letter drawings for the Perpetua and Gill Sans typefaces to the foundry, whose drawing office and engineering staff modified them to suit the hot-metal technology.
‘A Heavy, Closely-Massing Type’
With the Golden Cockerel series, Gill immersed himself completely in the production of the typefaces, assuming the responsibility of ensuring that his drawings were converted to metal, sized on the body, spaced correctly and tested in page formats. By embracing the technology of the day, Gill was making a personal philosophical leap. Previously, the designer had turned his back on metal typecasting technology, adopted a reclusive, monastic lifestyle in rural England and settled on engraving in wood, he said, “for the sake of lettering.”
But Gill was passionate about the Golden Cockerel project and became absorbed in achieving technical precision without compromising his esthetic. In the late 1920s, most private presses in England routinely used Caslon Old Face in text settings. Gill and his collaborator Robert Gibbings, the owner of the Golden Cockerel Press and a fellow wood-engraver, decided the Four Gospels edition needed a typeface that would be robust enough to match the strong, illustrative images they were working on. Soon after starting the project, the novice type makers ran into several technical snags. The first was the practical problem of adjusting the large-scale drawings to their eventual reduced size for use. Gill conveyed his problem to Morison in correspondence: “I have made drawings to large scale, but how am I to tell what they'll look like small?” He added, “I have made a drawing of Lord's Prayer actual size of 18 point (body). But neither my hand nor my eye is capable of working so small. Still the general effect is what I wantãcolour, character, etc.” Gill solved his dilemma with characteristic ingenuity: by getting his small sketch photographically enlarged, working over the detail and having it reduced again, he began to achieve what he wanted, which he expressed to Morison as, “a heavy closely-massing type suitable for use with modern wood engravings.”
Further problems were encountered when a larger point size than the 18-point text was cast for the titling font. As Gibbings put it, “One of the greatest changes you can make to a design is to alter its scale.” Gill reworked the drawings to make a titling font in 24 point and 36 point, as Gill said, “reducing the weight of the horizontals in proportion to that of the verticals, and so retrieving the lost elegance of the design.”
From Metal to Digital
This same kind of scrutiny and care was applied this year by International Typeface Corporation when bringing Gill’s classic typeface to digital form. In researching the Golden Cockerel typefaces, English type designer Dave Farey contacted Sebastian Carter, who with his father Will Carter at the Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, has had exclusive use of the original metal type since 1977. The younger Carter had been sparingly and lovingly using the typeface in 18 point for book and pamphlet settings. Seeing the ingenuity and variety of its contemporary use confirmed to both Farey and Colin Brignall, ITC's European type consultant, that Golden Cockerel types would be esthetically valuable and an important contribution to the type collection when launched in a digital format. Prints of the type in Carter’s possessionãthe roman and titling fontsãwere pulled on a variety of papers for study and comparison with the original letterpress printing, and enlarged drawings and photographic reductions were then made.
Research then continued at London’s St. Bride Printing Library, where librarian James Mosley showed Brignall and Farey a copy of Gill’s experimental drawing of the Lord’s Prayer--and the original enlargements of it. Almost unnoticed in the library’s collection was a small case of 14-point italic lowercase, which was attributed to Gill but had not been used by the Golden Cockerel Press in the production of the Four Gospels. Letterpress proofs of the lowercase italic were taken for further reference. Additional examples of the italic were located at Thomas Yoseloff’s Golden Cockerel Press bookshop in London, which houses the complete works of the Golden Cockerel Press.
Consulting with type historian John Dreyfus, the ITC development team discovered that the original Golden Cockerel patterns and matrices of the type, manufactured by H.W. Caslon Letter Foundry, were kept in the vaults of the Cambridge University Library in the Stanley Morison collection. There Farey examined and measured the metal masters and made visual comparisons with the letterpress references, and then created the first-stage drawings of the ITC Golden Cockerel faces.
Completing the Family
Capitals for the italic were then devised by studying Gill’s other types and alphabets, along with Gill’s numerous lettering projects including stone engravings, to ensure that the set of capitals would complement the lowercase and relate well to the existing roman. In tandem with the roman and italic and the separate titling font, a set of ornaments and original initials were developed to give a full span to Gill’s expressive wood engravings, etchings and carvings that would carry the master’s fingerprint. Essentially, the ITC Golden Cockerel initial alphabet represents Gill’s style of wood letters, including the exuberant flourished serifs and splendid lombardic stresses found in commissions from the Golden Cockerel, St. Dominic’s and Curwen Presses and simple bookplates and devices developed throughout his life with letters.
ITC also added ITC Golden Cockerel ornaments, which interpret and celebrate Gill’s skills as an illustrator. The ornaments were selected by Brignall from research at the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, along with published references that include borders, tailpieces and typographic devices. Gill’s ecclesiastical style is well represented, balanced with embellishments taken from nature and mythology--the three-leaf clover, the mulberry tree, the Welsh Dragon, to the motif used in The Canterbury Tales, described by Gill as “the inadequate fig leaf.” These decorations are suitable for use with all roman or sans serif styles, but more appropriately have been chosen, as Gill would say, “to be fit for their purpose,” relating to the ITC Golden Cockerel typefaces, the unique digital versions of Eric Gill’s first independent type designs.
Contributors: Joyce Rutter Kaye, James Mosley and Dave Farey
Look at samples of the typefaces:
ITC Golden Cockerel™ Roman
ITC Golden Cockerel™ Italic
ITC Golden Cockerel™ Titling
ITC Golden Cockerel™ Initials and Ornaments
|
|
|