Buried in the churchyard at Litton Cheney, Dorset, England is the noted English engraver, designer, typographer, and painter, (Alan) Reynolds Stone who for many years had lived at the Old Rectory at Litton Cheney.
Alan Reynolds Stone was born on March 13, 1909 at Eton, the son and grandson of Eton masters. he was educated there and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. where he obtained a degree in history in 1930. At the suggestion of a Magdalene don who had been the assistant printer to the University, he was accepted by Walter Lewis as an unofficial apprentice in the University Press where he learned his trade.
A chance meeting on a train from London to Cambridge with Eric Gill resulted in an invitation to stay at Gill’s house for a productive fortnight. Stone left Cambridge University Press after two years, and spent another two years working for a small west country printer, in Taunton, engraving in the evenings, and at weekends walking and cycling to west country ports and villages to draw sailing-ships, and collect nineteenth century illustrated books. Commissions were increasing and he set up as a freelance, which, apart from war service in RAF Photo Interpretation, he remained.
The first book to contain the calligraphic engraved cartouches for which he became famous was the Nonesuch Press Shakespeare Anthology, 1935 and in March 1936 Oliver Simon published in Signature No 2 the first article on his woodcut calligraphy, written by John Carter.
He designed the 3d Victory Stamp in 1946, the country’s five and ten-pound notes, the clock device to head the leader page of The Times in 1949, the Royal Arms in the masthead of The Times, and the title itself, in 1951; and, in 1954, a typeface, Minerva, his only published typeface.
Reynolds Stone was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953 and a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1956 and in 1965 he designed and cut the memorial to Winston Churchill in Westminster Abbey.
Alan Reynolds Stone died on June 23, 1979 and as previously mentioned was buried in the churchyard at Litton Cheney
Peter Hall said,
November 13, 2009 at 6:21 am
I note that you wrongly give at the head of this site on Reynolds Stone his birth-date as 1900. He was born in 1909.
Kind regards, and with a great affection for Reynolds
Peter Hall