Have you heard of the the mad Englishman of art and abuse from England?

For those of you graphic designers who work with typography, you would definitely know the typeface called Gill Sans.

Eric Gill Typography

Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface was designed by Eric Gill back in 1926.

You can find this common typeface in various applications, including the iconic Penguin books typography, as a standard digital font installed on many computers, and in the modern BBC logo.

His full name is Arthur Eric Rowton Gill. Besides being a typeface designer, Eric was an English sculptor, stone-cutter and print-maker.

Wait, there is more….

The Mad Englishman Of Art And Abuse Eric Gill

How many of you know the repulsive side of Eric Gill?

In 1989, his sexual improprieties, taken from his private diaries, was exposed by Fiona MacCarthy in the biography tilted “Eric Gill“.

He started keeping a diary at the age of fifteen till fifty-eight.

Creative but eccentric Eric Gill recorded his day to day of his work, earnings, expenditures and his ‘naughty escapade’.

It was his wife Mary Gill who sold her hedonistic husband’s complete set of 40- volume diaries to the University of California, Los Angeles, shortly after his death.

This English artist-craftsman had lived a very perverse family and sexual life, that would shock and revolt many of you.

Keep reading…

Gill had incestuous relationships with his own sisters Angela and Gladys.

He maintained these controversial relationships throughout the remainder of his adult life.

Not only that, this Catholic convert even had “inappropriate” intimacies with his sisters, but his two of his three daughters, Betty and Petra.

You can read the ‘naughty‘ jottings from his diaries published on on page 156 in “Eric Gill” by Fiona MacCarthy.

Strangely, according to his daughter Petra, shortly before her 90th birthday, she revealed to Patrick Nuttgens, that she was not at all embarrassed.

Petra was not perturbed by the media furor. She went on to say that her own attitude to sex had not been harmed.

The sisters had never been made to feel shame.

This wild Englishman of art not only bedded his own family members, but domestic helpers, the teacher who ran the school at Pigotts (that was where his final home was) and even the family dog was not spared!

Eric Gill A Flasher

You can see many pictures of this bearded artist wearing a loose-fitting cassock. He wore this kind of attire, not because of comfort, but so that he could conveniently exposed his ‘manhood’ to others.

Image this.

This sexual deviant is the same man who was named Royal Designer for Industry, the highest British award for designers, by the Royal Society of Arts.

With his abhorrent and aberrant lifestyle made known to the public, yet his work, Stations of the Cross is still displayed inside Westminster Cathedral.

His other iconic carvings of Ariel and Prospero, inspired by The Tempest, still adorn the Deco parts of the BBC’s headquarters at the end of Regent Street in London.

You can also view his Creation of Adam is in the lobby of the Palais des Nations, now the European HQ of the United Nations in Geneva.

There is even a website called Eric Gill Society where you can join as a member.

It is a resource for the work and history of Eric Gill and the Guild of St Joseph, founded in Ditchling, Sussex.