Colin Banks Rewind: Mining the past
The talk will describe the rise newspaper distributors, W. H. Smith and Sons, illustrating the firm’s increasing use of advertising -they first used the slogan ‘First with the News’ in 1860.
St John Homby, a Managing Director of Smith’s, pursued hand-printing, and started the Ashendene Press in 189t;. Shortly after Eric Gill was learning calligraphy from Edward Johnstone and finding his way into letter cutting. Homby sought out Gill’s rising talent and in 1903 W. H. Smith commissioned Gill to hand-paint the lettering on the face of their bookshop in Paris.
Between 18 October 1905 and 1 January 1906 Smith’s opened 1t;5 new shops and commissioning Gill to hand-letter every one was out of the question. So Smith’s issued comprehensive guidelines for sign writers to be used by the shops throughout Britain and abroad. Hand-painted lettering was eventually abandoned, but the basic character of Gill’s W. H. Smith lettering was evident in nearly every market town and railway station newspaper stall in England into the 196o’s. Gill’s drawings for Smith’s lettering are Trajan in the capitals, but the lowercase and italic letters have broad-pen features. The serifs are as a sign-writer’s brush would make them.