Perpetua of Carthage

When in the year 203 AD the Christian Perpetua of Carthage was massacred by a bull, she probably had no idea that 1,700 years later her martyrdom would be commemorated by one of the greatest typographers of his time – Eric Gill .

In 1925 Stanley Morison decided to commission Gill to create a new font for the Monotype Corporation. As he wrote after the artist's death, he decided to work with Gill because he wanted to create a completely new typeface that would not be a variation on fonts created in the past and would not be as eccentric as the fonts used in books associated with the Art and Crafts movement. Gill, then at the height of his fame as a sculptor, seemed the best person to perform such a commission.

The work lasted several years and in 1929 Gill was able to present a typeface which he called Perpetua. Its slanted version received the unofficial name Felicty, commemorating St. Felicity, who was martyred at the same time as Perpetua. The new typeface quickly gained, and continues to this day, special popularity among publishers of collectors' and bibliophile editions. At Rambler we set with Perpetua a collection of poems Paris by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska.

The religious references were no accident. Both Gill and Morison were believing and practicing Catholics.

And one more thing about money. Unfortunately, we have no information about how much Monotype Corporation paid Gill for Perpetua. However, Christopher Sandford, owner of the famous Golden Cockerel Press between 1932 and 1959, recalled that Gill was paid about £600, or about £28,000 in today's money, for fonts intended exclusively for that press.

Above: Eric Gill, The Martyrdom of St. Saturus , 1928.

Saturus was Perpetua's brother, martyred with her. The graphic illustrated the text of The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity , included in 1929, together with a speciemen of the new typeface antiqua, in the famous seventh and last volume of the annual devoted to typography The Fleuron , edited by Stanley Morison.