Obituary

Michael Renton

Artist and craftsman of consummate skill as an engraver in wood and stone

It was as the last apprentice in the trade engravers Slingers, in Horseferry Road, London, that Michael Renton, who has died aged 67, acquired his skills with graver and wood; these were invaluable for his later artistic development. Long before wood engraving was revived as a means of artistic expression in the early decades of the 20th century, especially by Eric Gill, and later by Gertrude Hermes, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes Millar Parker, John Farleigh, Reynolds Stone and Gwen Raverat, it was employed by the printing trade for illustrations, often mundane.

At Slingers he learned to engrave illustrations for scientic instrument catalogues, images that were clearer than half-tones and cheaper than those of the upstart rival, scraper-board. He went on to become by his own description, "a designer, engraver and lettering craftsman", a modest title for a man of such skill and artistry.

For many years he lived and worked in an un-modernised granary at Icklesham, near Winchelsea in East Sussex. Visiting Rye in the mid-1970s, I was impressed by the high quality and variety of the sign-painted lettering on the shop fascias, and learned years later that this was Renton's work. His bucolic appearance led those who met him to feel that he had strayed into the modern world from another, pre-industrial time. This could be misleading, as when in a bar off Leicester Square he produced - from the pocket of a jacket a poacher would envy - a Filofax.

He grew up in Harrow. He went briefly to the art school there until, seeing an apprenticeship offered by Slingers, he felt that this might be more up his street.

As a freelance lettering craftsman, Michael Renton also learned to carve inscriptions in stone, and many dreary churchyards have been enhanced by his strong, condent headstones. When Harriet Frazer established Memorials by Artists in the late 1980s, an agency for those seeking well-designed, well-carved gravestones and memorials, it was Renton who provided their distinctive wood-engraved device.

As well as being a gifted artist and craftsman, he also had a deep interest in and knowledge of the history of wood engraving, and had been working on a history of this craft.

His illustrations appear in several books, his fine bookplates adorned many more. He lectured, too, with great assurance and considerable wit.

Forced to leave his remote Sussex lair, Renton moved to Winchester, where the dean and chapter of the cathedral had long been his patrons. Here he lived in the heart of the city and, lacking a workshop, carved his stones in a rented shed with no natural light. His evenings when he wasn't working - he had no television - were spent in the Wykeham Arms. It was from Winchester that I twice lured him to Reading to demonstrate wood engraving to undergraduates in the university's department of typography and graphic communication.

In 1993 an example of his stone carving was added to the Crafts Council's permanent collection of lettering and calligraphy, for which he chose David Pye's words: "Two minutes' experience teach an eager man more than two weeks teach an indifferent one."

Renton worked happily in the lettering tradition of Eric Gill and Reynolds Stone, adding his own individual expression, which was quite free of self-conscious mannerisms. He was a member of Letter Exchange, whose lectures - including a memorable one he gave in 1990 - are held at the Art Workers' Guild in Queen's Square, London. He was also a member of the Double Crown Club. When Memorials by Artists held an exhibition at Blickling Hall, Norfolk in 1998, he showed his own, undated gravestone, the inscription reading: "Remember MR Maker of memorials to several others and of this one to himself."

His death removes a unique individual from the contemporary world of craft and design. He was unmarried.

Michael Renton, wood engraver and lettering craftsman, born January 1 1934; died July 15 2001

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