Percy Delf Smith

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Percy Delf Smith
RDI
Delf Smith, 1928
Born
Percy John Smith

(1882-03-00)March 1882
Dulwich, Surrey, England
Died30 October 1948(1948-10-30) (aged 66)
Education
Known for
Movement
Spouse
​
(m. 1928)​

Percy John Delf Smith[a] RDI (March 1882 – 30 October 1948)[2][3] was a British artist who worked in engraving, painting, lettering, calligraphy and book design.[4][5][1][6][7][8]

Early life[edit]

Born Percy John Smith in Dulwich, London, Delf Smith took an apprenticeship with furniture maker Frederick Staddon[9] before studying at Camberwell and the Central Schools of Arts and Crafts. His instructor in lettering at Camberwell was Edward Johnston, an extremely influential calligrapher and lettering artist whose Arts and Crafts movement style of lettering and use of Roman capitals had a strong influence on Delf Smith's career.[10] Johnston's successor was Graily Hewitt, one of Johnston's pupils; Hewitt when he left recommended Delf Smith for the position himself.[10] Delf Smith then established a career as a lettering artist and teaching the topic, publishing Lettering & Writing, a slipcase of lettering models, in 1908.[11]

Johnston and his pupils' lettering work used calligraphy and extensive use of Roman capitals, such as those on Trajan's Column. Johnston wrote that "The Roman capitals have held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions."[12][13][14] Delf Smith shared this style, naming his workshop the Roman Lettering Company[15] and commenting that Roman lettering has "content and atmosphere, and good examples convey a sense of stability and satisfaction",[16] although his textbooks showed a wide range of styles and work by other artists and in other writing systems.[17]

First World War[edit]

"Solitude (Thiepval after the Battles, 1916)"

During the First World War, Delf Smith enlisted in the Royal Marines as a volunteer, serving on the Western Front in France.[18] In his early thirties, he was older than most men serving.[18] A lot of his war service was spent digging trenches behind the front lines, at one point coming under bombardment, seeing four men killed and six wounded nearby.[19]

Delf Smith as a serving soldier and not an official War Artist was several times reprimanded for drawing because of security concerns, although he received more freedom to carry out art over time through making connections with other soldiers.[19] Finding sketching unsatisfying, he requested that his parents send him some copper plates and he created drypoint engravings of the war around Thiepval before and after being invalided out from France in June 1917.[20][21][22][b][25][26] After his set of realistic depictions of the battlefield, he created a later series of seven prints, Dance of Death, updating the medieval imagery of the dance of death to the war:[27][28][29][30]

  • "Death Refuses"
    "Death Refuses"
  • "Death Waits"
    "Death Waits"
  • "Death Intoxicated"
    "Death Intoxicated"

Career in London[edit]

After the war, Delf Smith returned to London, where he worked as a designer and artist through his company, the Dorno Workshop and Studio (earlier Dorian Workshop and Studio),[31] creating and executing designs for clients including The Sunday Times,[32] the National Museum of Wales,[33] King's College London,[34] Southampton Civic Centre,[35] the BBC,[36] the Boy Scouts Association[37] and London Transport. He also worked as a book designer. Reading Wuthering Heights had a strong effect on him and he created several sets of art inspired by it.[38]

In 1928 he married botanist Ellen Marion Delf, both from then on using the name Delf Smith.[39] His wife's friend Margaret T. Martin described it as "the happiest of marriages".[40][41][42] One of his assistants was William Sharpington, who later established his own successful studio.[43][44]

One of his last projects was two war memorial panels for the Free Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb.[45]

Delf Smith believed strongly in the artistic value of lettering, and wrote several books and lectures teaching the topic.[46][47][48] Shown are some lettering models from his book Civic and Memorial Lettering (1946):[1]

  • Petit-serif alphabet for London Transport[49]
    Petit-serif alphabet for London Transport[49]
  • Sans-serif capital alphabet[50]
    Sans-serif capital alphabet[50]
  • Sans-serif lower case alphabet[51]
    Sans-serif lower case alphabet[51]
  • Italic upper case
    Italic upper case
  • Italic lower case
    Italic lower case
  • Roman capitals
    Roman capitals
  • Roman capitals
    Roman capitals
  • Lower case
    Lower case
  • Lower case
    Lower case

Shown are some designs created by Delf Smith's workshop:

For the LPTB he worked on a variant of its corporate Johnston typeface with serifs for its 55 Broadway headquarters.[52] The same design was also used at some stations, especially Sudbury Town and Arnos Grove.[52][53] Several digitisations of it have been published,[54][55] and one made privately for Transport for London.[56][c] Delf Smith's drawings are now at St Bride Library.[63]

Roundel at Sudbury Town station

Delf Smith became a Royal Designer for Industry for lettering in 1940[64] and in 1941 he was elected Master of the Art Workers' Guild.[65] He died in 1948.[66][67][68][22]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Delf Smith was known under his birth name during his early career until he married and shared his wife's surname. This article uses Delf Smith throughout for consistency and as his preferred name after his marriage.[1]
  2. ^ The Imperial War Museum article is published without a credited author but was written by Dr. Stacey Clapperton.[23][24]
  3. ^ According to its tags list on MyFonts, Neil Summerour's Kurosawa Serif and Kurosawa Hand typefaces are also influenced by Delf Smith's work.[57][58][59] Various other typefaces have been published based on the Roman capitals-led style of Arts and Crafts lettering Delf Smith practiced but not specifically based on his work, see e.g. the following.[60][61][62]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Delf Smith 1946.
  2. ^ Seton, Jim (8 June 2018). "Poignant reminders of war's impact on whole town". Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  3. ^ "Percy Delf Smith (1882–1948) – Find a Grave..." Find a Grave. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  4. ^ "Percy John Delf Smith". Art UK. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  5. ^ Goodale; Elizabeth (1950). "Percy Smith Memorial Exhibition". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 98 (4820): 496–498. ISSN 0035-9114. JSTOR 41364140.
  6. ^ Shaw 1988.
  7. ^ "Bleak Landscapes from West Yorkshire to the Somme: An Exhibition of the Artwork of Percy J Smith 1882–1948 Artist, Etcher, Calligrapher, Typographer" (PDF). The Old School Room, Haworth. Retrieved 27 August 2023.
  8. ^ Loeb, Josh (13 May 2010). "Feature: Exhibition - War artist Percy Smith at Hampstead Museum". Camden New Journal. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  9. ^ Shaw 2020, p. 10.
  10. ^ a b Delf Smith 1936, p. xi.
  11. ^ Delf Smith 1908.
  12. ^ Johnston, Edward (1906). Writing & Illuminating & Lettering. Macmillan. pp. 268–269, 384, 391.
  13. ^ Mosley, James (1964). "Trajan Revived". Alphabet. 1: 17–48.
  14. ^ Tam, Keith (2002). Calligraphic tendencies in the development of sanserif types in the twentieth century (PDF). Reading: University of Reading (MA thesis). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
  15. ^ Nash 2002, p. 19.
  16. ^ Delf Smith 1936, p. 2.
  17. ^ Delf Smith 1936, pp. 82–95.
  18. ^ a b Shaw 2020, p. 12.
  19. ^ a b Shaw 2020, p. 15.
  20. ^ "Percy Delf Smith: Making Art as a Soldier on the Western Front". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  21. ^ Delf, Peter (6 August 2018). "War and Peace: the art of Percy Smith - Bradford Museums & Galleries". Bradford Museums & Galleries. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  22. ^ a b Sole, Kate (17 February 2010). "Forgotton etcher Percy Smith is celebrated at Forty Hall". East London and West Essex Guardian Series. Retrieved 25 August 2023.
  23. ^ https://twitter.com/s_clapperton/status/887603612456804353
  24. ^ "Stacey Clapperton, University of Glasgow - Academia.edu". Academia.edu. Retrieved 25 August 2023.
  25. ^ Shaw 2020, p. 16.
  26. ^ Leake, Stafford (March 1926). "War and Peace in the Etchings and Drawings of Percy Smith". Bookman’s Journal. pp. 215–221. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  27. ^ Shaw 2020, p. 4.
  28. ^ M., L. (April 1922). "The Dance of Death: a series of etchings by Percy Smith". The American Magazine of Art. pp. 121–123. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  29. ^ Dodgson, Campbell (October 1921). "Mr. Percy Smith's "Dance of Death"". The Print Collector’s Quarterly. pp. 323–326. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  30. ^ "A Modern Dance of Death". The International Studio. April 1922. pp. 138–142. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  31. ^ Allison, Jane. "Percy John Delf Smith, R.D.I. 1882-1948". Allison Gallery, Inc. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  32. ^ Delf Smith 1936, pp. 38–47.
  33. ^ Delf Smith 1936, p. 57.
  34. ^ Delf Smith 1936.
  35. ^ Delf Smith 1936, p. 20.
  36. ^ Delf Smith 1936, p. 77.
  37. ^ Rowallan, Thomas (1 January 1976). Rowallan: The Autobiography of Lord Rowallan. Dundurn. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-1-55488-282-3. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  38. ^ Van Der Meer, Carolyne (2 October 2018). "In the Footsteps of Emily Brontë: A Catalogue of the Art Work of Percy J. Smith, Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights. Hertfordshire: The Percy Smith Foundation, 2016". Brontë Studies. 43 (4): 365–367. doi:10.1080/14748932.2018.1503011. S2CID 218687771.
  39. ^ "Women at Queen Mary Exhibition Online - Featured Women - Ellen Delf-Smith". QMUL. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  40. ^ Martin, Margaret T. (1 September 1980). "Ellen Marion Delf-Smith, D.Sc., F.L.S. (1883–1980)". British Phycological Journal. 15 (3): 246. doi:10.1080/00071618000650221.
  41. ^ Fernanda Helen Perrone. "Smith, (Ellen) Marion Delf-". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62341. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  42. ^ "Horniman History: Lectures given by Women". Horniman Museum. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  43. ^ Nash 2002, pp. 21–22.
  44. ^ Lubell 2010.
  45. ^ "Introduction to the Free Church Memorial display". Hampstead Garden Suburb Heritage Virtual Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2023.
  46. ^ Smith, Percy J. Lettering & Writing. London: B. T. Batsford.
  47. ^ Smith, Percy Delf (1945). "Beauty in Signs and Civic Lettering". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 93 (4688): 214–222. ISSN 0035-9114. JSTOR 41361954.
  48. ^ Pitt, John (28 May 2011). "Civic and Memorial Lettering – c1946". All about Storytelling. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  49. ^ Delf Smith 1946, p. 29.
  50. ^ Delf Smith 1946, p. 25.
  51. ^ Delf Smith 1946, p. 27.
  52. ^ a b Howes 2000, pp. 73–74.
  53. ^ Stanley, Eric. "The Johnston Delf Smith typeface at Sudbury Town station". YouTube. London Transport Museum. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  54. ^ Cortat, Mathieu. "Petit Serif". 205TF. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  55. ^ Bates, Keith. "Possible". K-Type.
  56. ^ "Johnston Delf Smith". Transport for London. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  57. ^ Summerour, Neil. "Kurosawa Serif". T26 Type Foundry. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  58. ^ Summerour, Neil. "Kurosawa Serif Font". MyFonts. T26. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  59. ^ Summerour, Neil. "Kurosawa Hand". MyFonts. T26. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  60. ^ Smith, Jamie. "English Engravers Roman". MyFonts. Smith Hands. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  61. ^ Vanson, Arthur. "Essendine 2". Letterhead Fonts. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  62. ^ Dooley, Jeremy. "Winsel". MyFonts. Insigne Design. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  63. ^ "There's always one". St Bride Foundation. 27 May 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  64. ^ "Past Royal Designers for Industry". RSA. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  65. ^ The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 1947. p. 190.
  66. ^ Shaw 2020, pp. 11, 17.
  67. ^ Shaw 2020, p. i.
  68. ^ "EMDS - ELLEN MARION DELF-SMITH". QMUL Library. Retrieved 25 August 2023.

Cited literature[edit]

External links[edit]

  • Exhibition brochure for a 2018 exhibition, showing a range of art by Delf Smith on a range of subjects
  • 1934 Dorian Workshop and Studio prospectus: pages 1-2, 3 and cover
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