Our June ’23 talk ‘Discovering MacDonald Gill’ was presented by Caroline Walker, his great-niece.
Caroline Walker’s grandfather was one of the other Gill brothers. The most famous of these was, of course, Eric Gill. Less well known was MacDonald (always referred to by family and friends as ‘Max’), who was two years younger. But he, too, had been deeply influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. Like Eric, he was a consummate calligrapher, whose work is still around to this day. Like Eric he was occasionally a sculptor. In fact his talents were many and varied. He was an architect, a cartographer, a mural-painter, a furniture designer, a set designer, an illustrator (of book covers, mainly).
The father of all thirteen of the Gill children was a clergyman, who nevertheless found time to dabble in the visual arts, and who strongly encouraged those of his offspring who showed talent in this field.
‘Max’ was employed by a wide range of people and organizations: the fellow-architect Edwin Lutyens, Frank Pick of the London Underground, Ernest Debenham, the poet Eleanor Farjeon, the Imperial War Graves Commission, Shell-Mex, the Empire Marketing Board, the Anglican Church, the Houses of Parliament, the General Post Office and the BBC (to name but a few). His famous ‘Wonderground’ map of the London Underground gave rise to a plethora of imitative ‘wonder-maps’ all over the world.
His Sussex links were important to him. Brighton was his birthplace. For a while he lived in Chichester; later he moved to Bognor.
His work was characterized by a style that has been called ‘Medieval Modernism’; it frequently contains a great deal of his typical charm and humour, while never being less than thoroughly professional in terms of its exemplary craftsmanship.
We were told of the failure of MacDonald’s first marriage, and of his second marriage (only a few months before his death from cancer) to Priscilla Johnston, the youngest daughter of his friend and mentor, the great calligrapher Edward Johnstone.
We are grateful to Caroline for her richly colourful Powerpoint, and for her wit and scholarship. Copies of her widely praised biography were available for inspection after the talk had ended.
Kevin Maynard