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MR. ERIC GILL ARTIST, CRAFTSMAN, AND AUTHOR Mr. Eric Gill A.R.A., who died in an Uxbridge nursing home on Sunday after an operation, was a forceful, refined, and single-minded artist, who had acquired reputation in four distinct branches of practice—sculpture, woodcutting, line engraving, and the design of printing types. He was, moreover, the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles, in which he descanted at large on Catholicism, industrialism, politics, and aesthetics. Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was born at Brighton on February 22, 1882, son of the Rev. A. T. Gill. He studied at Chichester Art School under G. H. Catt, and in 1899 entered the London office of Mr. W. D. Caroë, though he never practised architecture independently. Carved lettering was the first craft he took up, inspired and encouraged by Edward Johnston, whom he met as a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Master and pupil set up house together in Lincoln's Inn, and for nine years Gill was simply a monumental lettering artist, producing inscriptions (and sometimes heraldic shields) for tombstones. But he had already made his first essays in low-relief carving and sculpture in the round. Settling at Ditchling, Sussex, he worked at sculpture, lettering, and the making of woodcuts, setting up the St. Dominic's Press for the printing of these last and helping to edit a monthly magazine called the Game. In 1911 he met Mr. Augustus John, who helped to arrange his first exhibition, at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea. His development as an artist proceeded side by side with the crystallization of his views on sociology and theology. Beginning his adult life as an agnostic and a Socialist, he moved nearer and nearer to the Church of Rome. A long talk with the Abbot of Louvain had a crucial effect on him, and in February, 1913, he was received into the Loman Communion. Already married, and with several children, he could not attain full membership of a monastic rule, but he became Tertiary of the Order of St. Dominic, and from the time of his reception worked at ropaganda with all the ardour of a convert. He kind of artist he became was largely conditioned by his religious beliefs. In 1913 he was omnissioned to carve the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral, and carried hem out as low reliefs in Hoptonwood stone. Another important work was "The Driving out of the Money Changers," also in low relief, presented by Sir Michael Sadler as a war memorial to the University of Leeds. Gill was now in the full tide of his fame as a sculptor, graphic artist, and designer of printing types. His graphic work comprised chiefly line engravings and woodcuts, most of the latter being done for Golden Cockerel Press books issued by Mr. Robert Gibbing. Some of his best work was done in the department of lettering. For C. H. St. John Hornby he designed the lettering which is found over all premises of W. H. Smith and Son, and his Gill Sans type fount, a clean, gracefully designed and…