Honor Clerk

The genius of Reynolds Stone: a private man in a public world

Though his name is not widely known, his designs — for the press, publishing and the British passport among much else — were once part of everyday life

You may not know the name of Reynolds Stone, but it is almost impossible that you haven’t come across his designs. If you’re familiar with the masthead of the Economist or remember the clock on the top of the front page of the Times; if you’ve seen the colophon on a book published by the Folio Society or Hamish Hamilton or owned a Penguin edition of Shakespeare; if you’ve borrowed something from the London Library; if you had a £5 note in your wallet in the 1960s; if you’ve walked over the memorial to Winston Churchill on the floor of Westminster Abbey or if you own a passport with the royal coat of arms on the front, then you’ve been in close contact with the work of this wood engraver, typographer, letter-cutter and watercolourist.

The subject of this fond and beautifully illustrated memoir was born in 1909 into a family of academics. Both his father and grandfather were classics masters at Eton and, after attending an unusually benign prep school, Stone duly went on to Eton and Cambridge. From there he embarked on a newly created graduate training scheme at the Cambridge University Press and became familiar with every branch of printing, from machine room to design and layout. A chance meeting with Eric Gill, who taught him the technique of wood engraving, more or less completed his education and after a short spell with a printing firm in Taunton he went freelance. Commercial publishers and institutions of every kind, royalty, organisers of events, collectors and writers were soon beating a path to his door for title pages, illustrations, coats of arms, logos, programmes, bookplates and all the assorted ephemera of the print world. In due course he also learnt to cut letters in stone, and memorials became a staple of his trade.

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