STONE (Reynolds, 1909-1979, Designer & Engraver)

Fine Autograph Letter Signed to Professor MYNORS (Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville, 1903-1989, Classicist and Medievalist who held senior chairs of Latin at Oxford and Cambridge) saying that he would “be most grateful for your ruling on a point that has given me a lot of trouble over the Oxford Press shield. I cut the design in wood, as enclosed proof, and the Clarendon Press were delighted with it for a month when my division of the word ILLUMINATIO was noticed, and condemned as unthinkable in the 1st century. If it is possible to conceive a letter cutter in the classical era being faced with the problem of dividing a word into 3 parts in this way can one say that he would have found it unthinkable to cut it as I have? The point is that if I have to revert to MINA-TIO all my letters will have to be much smaller and there will be ugly gaps. As I have cut it one avoids the awkward tendency to read across the word domina or dominina. Ideally also, from my point of view DOMINUS would be happier DOM-INUS. If you say my divisions are impossible and a hopeless solecism I shall re-cut the shield without feeling that I am a victim of of pedantry or plain conservatism. The Latinists among my friends are not outragesd but then they are not palaeographers...”, with an autograph postscript on the verso about their last meeting, The Old Rectory, Litton Cheney, Dorchester,headed paper, 22nd February

Stone said of his work: "One bold flourish is usually better than a larger number of small twiddles, which are not worth doing anyway. But the final danger is to do too much because the eye, delighted by a small mouthful, is soon surfeited."

Item Date:  1956

Stock No:  42521      £276

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