Reynolds Stone

The family were friends of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis and his family. In 2017 his son, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis named the character of his final film 'Reynolds Woodcock', as a reference to him, and his typeface designs were used for the titles of the film.

There was a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Dorset County Museum in 1981, followed by a major exhibition of his work in the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum between July and October 1982. Another, to honour the centenary of his birth, was held at The Red House, Aldeburgh, in April 2009.

His last engraving was the only one he managed to complete of a series to illustrate a republication of Sacheverell Sitwell's book Valse Des Fleurs, published in a limited edition of 400 copies in 1980. It appears on the title page of the book, and a tailpiece woodcut is published at the end.

For the Compton Press he illustrated A Shepherd's Life by W. H. Hudson (1977) and A Year of Birds by Iris Murdoch (1978).

In 1968 the Chilmark Press published an edition of The Mountains, a volume of poetry and prose by R. S. Thomas to complement a series of wood engravings made by Stone after John Piper in 1946.

Stone illustrated a number of books and portfolios for Warren Editions. The first was The Other Side of the Alde (1968), the first use of his Janet typeface. This was followed by ABC, an Alphabet (1974), The Old Rectory (1976) and a posthumous new edition of Boxwood (1983).

He designed the £5 and £10 bank notes respectively in 1963 and 1964 – including the Queen's portrait – for the Bank of England.

For the Limited Editions Club he illustrated Herman Melville's Omoo in 1961. He also illustrated Saint Thomas Aquinas (1969) and The Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1974) for the club.

Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote poems to complement a series of wood engravings that Stone had already completed. The result was Boxwood (1957), a limited edition of 500 copies, an extended new edition of which was published in 1960. Stone continued with A Sociable Plover by Eric Linklater (1957) and The Skylark and other poems by Ralph Hodgson (1958).

In 1956 Stone was elected as a Royal Designer for Industry for his work in Lettering.

In 1954 he designed the Minerva typeface for Linotype, intended to complement Gill's Pilgrim in display sizes. He also designed a proprietary face named after his wife, Janet.

He engraved the Royal Arms for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953 and the official coat of arms for Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1955, still reproduced today on the cover of the UK passport.

In 1952 he carved the memorial tablet to employees of the museum who died in World War II in the Grand Entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum. This memorial complements the Eric Gill memorial to employees who died in World War I. In 1965 he carved the memorial to Winston Churchill and the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in Westminster Abbey. In 1966 he carved the memorial for T. S. Eliot in the abbey. One of his latest works, in 1977, was the gravestone of composer Benjamin Britten.

In 1949 he redesigned the famous clock logo of The Times.

One of his most successful editions for a commercial publisher was an anthology compiled by Adrian Bell, The Open Air (1949).

He was elected a member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1948. In 1953 he was appointed a CBE and moved to the Old Rectory in Litton Cheney near Dorchester, where he lived until his death.

He designed a number of Royal Mail postage stamps, starting with the 1946 Victory stamp.

In 1939 Stone started to teach himself to cut letters in stone. His expertise in lettering led to a number of prestigious commissions for memorials.

He married the photographer Janet Woods in 1938. They had four children – the painter Edward Stone (1940), the designer Humphrey Stone (1942), the illustrator Phillida Gili, and Emma Beck, wife of artist Ian Beck. His wife had a 30 year long relationship with Kenneth Clark.

In 1935 he produced 42 headpieces for The Shakespeare Anthology for the Nonesuch Press and, in the same year, 12 wood engravings for A Butler's Recipe Book 1719 for the Cambridge University Press. For the Gregynog Press he illustrated The History of Saint Louis (1937) and The Praise and Happinesse of the Countrie-Life (1938), the latter being particularly successful. In the same year he illustrated Old English Wines and Cordials for the High House Press. He illustrated Lucretia Borgia for the Golden Cockerel Press in 1942.

In 1932 he moved to Taunton, where he spent two years working at the printing firm of Barnicott & Pearce, a very different experience from his time in Cambridge. His experience of printing convinced him that this was not what he wanted to do for rest of his life. At Taunton he came across some old wood blocks which Barnicott gave him, and, in a bookshop at Combwich, he started to buy the wood engraved books of the 1850s and 1860s. He had already come across the wood engravings of Thomas Bewick at Cambridge, and, in 1934, 'sacked himself' and became a freelance wood engraver, moving to Codicote near Hitchin.

Alan Reynolds Stone, CBE, RDI (13 March 1909 – 23 June 1979) was an English wood engraver, engraver, designer, typographer and painter.

Stone was born on 13 March 1909 at Eton College, where both his grandfather, E. D. Stone, and father, E. W. Stone, were assistant masters. He was educated there and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained a degree in history in 1930.