Quoting a passage from the Gospel of St John, Omnia Per Ipsum was created as a gift for Gill's father, Arthur. The inscription resonates with both the Christian beliefs that Gill and his father shared, and as a reflection on his father's importance to him. Gill's innovative approach to typography – particularly his reintroduction of Roman lettering – was tremendously influential, not only on his contemporaries in the Ditchling Guild but on typographical design as a whole. Omnia Per Ipsum shows an early stage in the development of Gill's work. The kerning, or spacing of letters, is inconsistent and uncomfortable – the unnecessarily close grouping of the N, I and A at the end of the first line suggests Gill hadn't yet developed a feel for the sense of space carried by letters.

Provenance

By descent in the artist's family.