<p><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-.jpg” ><img title=”benson-” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-.jpg” alt=”" width=”291″ height=”330″ /></a><fakecaps>This is a story about a man</fakecaps> who might easily—too easily—be called a latter-day Mediaevalist or a Renaissance Master, if you did not see a little more deeply into the nature of the man and the kind of work he does. You might also think of William Morris, minus the Pre-Raphaelitism which defeated the aims of that immortal esthete, but even with the evocation of all three of these figures from the past you would not be seeing John Howard Benson, or be reaching, through understanding, a true appreciation of the significance of his work or the philosophy of art on which it securely rests.</p>

<p>Securely—that is important, and never more so than in an age of transition to something called modernism, of which so many expressions in all the arts seem to rest anything but securely, and often on bases of dubious permanence. To say that art is wholly a transient and contemporary expression is to encourage superficiality in art training, art philosophy and art performance.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2464″ style=”width: 260px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-reed.jpg” ><img title=”benson-reed” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-reed.jpg” alt=”" width=”250″ height=”307″ /></a><p>Here a reed is cut in its first stage toward a finished pen. The bent scrap of watch-spring is an important part of this pen-making technique, as seen in the technical drawings at lower right.</p></div>

<p>It is very true that art should try to express the spirit of its own time (unless that spirit is tawdry, trivial, vulgar or commercial) —and all great art has always done this, writing in stone, on canvas, in wood and metal and porcelain a finer history of human civilization than the history that has been written by the emperors and generals. Walter Pach very truly said, “. . . and I point to the record of all true artists as that of a body of men who have held to their faith with a singleness of purpose that rises above the need of proof or the possibility of it”—to which I would like to add what Everett Dean Martin said about the great humanists of the Renaissance: “. . . and there is no blood on their hands.”</p>

<p>If this story about John Howard Benson is to accomplish what I ardently wish it to, it must reach a conclusion which will explain, first, a versatility that achieves work of the utmost distinction in cutting letters in stone, in sculpture, in sensitive lettering with handmade reed and quill pens, in wood engraving and in typography. Here are accomplishments bafflingly unrelated in the eye of the layman, but in Benson&#8217;s practice of them closely related by an abiding sincerity of approach and performance—which is the second (yet primary) theme of this article.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2463″ style=”width: 245px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-cutting.jpg” ><img title=”benson-cutting” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-cutting.jpg” alt=”" width=”235″ height=”299″ /></a><p>Mr. Benson cutting a memorial inscription in the style tradition of Colonial and Early American lettering, which he considers has not been surpassed.</p></div>

<p>To begin with, we must see Benson as an artist with the true craftsman&#8217;s respect for standards. In an age which seeks quick and easy ways of achieving second and third rate effects that are mistaken for first rate by people who don&#8217;t know the difference, or who don&#8217;t care, Benson&#8217;s aim is to restate, in his work, certain truths which begin with rightness of objective intention and end with sound material performance. He stands very firmly on emphasizing the importance of the <em>right way of doing things</em> in an age in which the craftsman is too seldom asked how well he can do a thing—and far too often is asked how quickly or how cheaply he can do it.</p>

<p>If John Howard Benson were to become known as a Mediaevalist this would never be taken to mean that he is an escapist into the past. Mediaevalism would never be an affectation with Benson any more than it was with Bertram Goodhue, but rather a return to the present of certain vitally important truths relating to the right way for a true craftsman to follow. There are no new truths—we need only the courage and forcefulness to restate, in our work, the old truths.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2462″ style=”width: 160px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/memorial-figure.jpg” ><img title=”memorial-figure” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/memorial-figure.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”300″ /></a><p>A memorial figure, photographed in the John Stevens Shop. In its manner there is an interesting synthesis of modern feeling and Mediaevalism.</p></div>

<p>In Benson&#8217;s studio in Newport there is a stimulating simplicity and freedom from clutter and typical stage properties. As a work room it is an expression and a reflection of an open mind. From one wall, always before him, thirty centuries of fine craftsmanship speak their message from an exquisitely sensitive Egyptian bas-relief—a head which quietly and serenely does the thing which a few of the “moderns” are (often rather peevishly) trying to do. It has a sobering effect to live and work with a tangible reminder that the ancient sculptors of the Nile civilization did things like this much more finely than we.</p>

<p>This whole matter of standards is so important that we should here like to quote a paragraph, written by Benson, of which it would be hard to find a duplicate today—if we were seeking a quiet, dignified statement of the craftsman&#8217;s inalienable right to do his work as he sincerely believes it should be done. It is from a printed announcement setting forth the credo and the modus operandi of the <a href=”http://johnstevensshop.com/” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','johnstevensshop.com']);”>John Stevens Shop</a> which Benson, with three associates, carries on in an ancient workshop on Thames Street in Newport. Concerning this shop and its practices Mr. Benson writes:</p>

<p>“It exists today, as formerly, for the purpose of producing stones carved in a tradition of sound workmanship that has stood the test of time in America. Experience has taught us that in order to carry on this tradition of quality we must operate our shop differently, in several particulars, from the way in which other contemporary stonecutting shops are operated.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2461″ style=”width: 310px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-hand-master.jpg” ><img title=”benson-hand-master” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-hand-master.jpg” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”273″ /></a><p>The hand of the master is here seen writing with a quill pen while the paper is firmly held down with a wooden spatula.</p></div>

<p>“In the first place we keep our organization small and give the greatest amount of responsibility possible to each of our workmen. We use hand tools rather than machines because we have found it impossible to do the kind of work we want to do otherwise. . . . All good artists have been modern in their own day. We try to follow the principles of good carved work of the past, but do not believe in actually copying past work. For the same reason we do not execute the designs of other living artists, no matter how eminent, but insist that the man who does the hand work should do the head work also. Only thus are true works of art produced.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2460″ style=”width: 220px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-eagle.jpg” ><img title=”benson-eagle” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-eagle.jpg” alt=”" width=”210″ height=”250″ /></a><p>The decorative eagle, at the head of this article, was engraved on wood by Benson for the John Stevens Shop.</p></div>

<p>“Similarly, we carve stones directly, and not through the agency of plaster models and pointing machines, which give to carved stone the impertinent quality of a plastic construction.” On the vexatious question of competitive bids, the John Stevens Shop has the courage to maintain a dignified aloofness. “Competition in price has meaning only when the product of both competitors is the same.” (Would that bidders for the production of a work of art might bear this in mind, particularly where painstaking skilled craftsmanship is involved.)</p>

<p>This old shop, by the way, is the history of small business in America. It was founded in 1705 by John Stevens, was carried on by two succeeding John Stevenses (son and grandson), and has been in practically continuous operation to the present.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2459″ style=”width: 310px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/winter-thames-street.jpg” ><img title=”winter-thames-street” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/winter-thames-street.jpg” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”194″ /></a><p>Winter on Thames Street, Newport, Rhode Island—the old John Stevens Shop, dating from 1705, stone-cutting headquarters of John Howard Benson.</p></div>

<p>Step into the shop and you step back two centuries—not in an antiquarian sense of retrogression, but into an atmosphere in which you feel that men used to work here who were proud of the quality and dignity of their work, men who worked in a spirit free from the competition of commercial pressure. Here is no “window dressing” to impress the customer. The front room, with old, serviceable furniture, some of it ancient, has a fine library of the kind of books that add something else to craftsmanship.</p>

<p>A door from this room gives into the stone-cutting shop, where stones in various stages of execution mingle with full-size drawings and studies—and outdoors, in a yard, are great blocks of stone and a crane for their handling. The yard is served by a back street, because one of the things a stone-cutter needs is stone.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2458″ style=”width: 160px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-instructional-drawings.jpg” ><img title=”benson-instructional-drawings” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-instructional-drawings.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”577″ /></a><p>These are a few of the explicit instructional drawings, which Mr. Benson engraved on wood to illustrate his scholarly book on lettering.</p></div>

<p>It is an exacting objective philosophy—not escapist affectation—that impels Benson to make his own pens for lettering. Every one of his enthusiastic students at the Rhode Island School of Design knows the reed—from which all of his reed pens are fashioned-by its proper name “Phragmites communis” and know, too, that it can usually be found in marshy tidewater meadows.</p>

<p>The Benson technic of making pens is shown in several close-up photographs, and is further illustrated by reproductions of a few of the forthright wood engravings which he made for his book on lettering, which should be read as source material by anyone who is at all seriously interested in the art embracing lettering and calligraphy.</p>

<p>For quill pens he prefers swan or peacock feathers, but if these aren&#8217;t to be had, he will cut an efficient pen from a turkey or goose feather. It is very like him to observe, as he strips the feather part from the quill itself, that the pen won&#8217;t look like the fancy quill pens we see in pictures. The whole feather gets in your way when you are really using it for lettering—and I imagine this will become a classic quotation among his students for many, many years (I have heard him say it myself): “We&#8217;re not going to <em>fly</em> with it; we&#8217;re going to <em>write</em> with it.”</p>

<p>“For 25 years,” wrote G.Y. Loveridge in a sprightly article in the <em>Providence Journal</em> last year, “John Howard Benson&#8217;s chief professional interest has been lettering—lettering with pen on paper, with gravers on wood, with chisels on stone. He also carves figures in stone (he is head of the sculpture department at the Rhode Island School of Design), does a bit of typesetting, sails a catboat, and has other skills, but lettering is his passion.”</p>

<div id=”attachment_2457″ style=”width: 310px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-making-quill-pen.jpg” ><img title=”benson-making-quill-pen” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-making-quill-pen.jpg” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”268″ /></a><p>The making of a quill pen is a technic of great nicety and skill. As in the reed pen, a bent piece of watch-spring is inserted in the barrel to hold enough ink to work with.</p></div>

<p>It is of signal importance that here is one man today who cares enough about lettering to devote his best efforts to preserving the standards of its proper forms—and what is more, to teach oncoming groups of students that these standards are important, and should be upheld.</p>

<p>Appreciation, in his own words, “involves the nature of tools and materials, and understanding purposes. When I teach lettering to beginners, we are concerned with understanding what letters are, why they are what they are, how the alphabet developed, and how tools developed. The world is full of thousands of kinds of letters, but not many people understand why they are what they are.”</p>

<div id=”attachment_2456″ style=”width: 220px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-calligraphy.jpg” ><img title=”benson-calligraphy” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-calligraphy.jpg” alt=”" width=”210″ height=”297″ /></a><p>Above, reproduced from his book, is an example of Mr. Benson&#39;s calligraphy—an accomplishment which modern shortcuts have long threatened to force into a place among the lost arts.</p></div>

<p>Beginning with an interest in lettering when he was 17, Benson&#8217;s first work was stone-cutting—and in this may lie some clue to the whole soundness of his craftsmanship and the rightness of his philosophy. I have never carved stone (much as I should like to) but I have watched John Howard Benson cut letters in stone, and I have felt how every stroke of the mallet does something irrevocable—the right or the wrong thing. I thought what wonderful training this must be, and could see how Benson&#8217;s preoccupation with rightness must have been born. If you draw a bad letter, or make a mistake, you can erase or correct. You can even tear up the drawing—but you can&#8217;t tear up a big slab of stone.</p>

<p>For the completeness of this story we must add to the list of things this unusual artist does, in addition to gravestones and lettering. He makes signs, tablets for houses, architectural inscriptions and garden figures. He is also a typographer and printer. For his work in typography he uses an old hand press, built in England in 1830.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2455″ style=”width: 160px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-winter.jpg” ><img title=”benson-winter” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-winter.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”107″ /></a><p>“Winter”—one of a set of four seasonal wood engravings by John Howard Benson.</p></div>

<p>Mr. Benson is tall, lean, six-something, with keen quizzical eyes above a rather informal beard. Whether you are watching him at work, or listening to his earnest talk about work, you are aware that he is as paradoxical as any true artist in that he has infinite patience to expend in doing a piece of work as it should be done, but quick impatience, tinged with scorn, if there is any question of compromising standards or aiming at second-rate results.</p>

<div id=”attachment_2454″ style=”width: 260px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-phragmites-communis.jpg” ><img title=”benson-phragmites-communis” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-phragmites-communis.jpg” alt=”" width=”250″ height=”303″ /></a><p>First we see the reed Phragmites communis stalked in its lair—a double armful of pen-making material. </p></div>

<p>If you talk with John Howard Benson, if you watch him work, if you are in tune with his philosophy of art and of skilled work you cannot escape the conviction that here, in this mechanistic age is an authentic artist. I use the term in the full sense in which it differentiates the great men of the Renaissance from many pattern-followers, academicians and faddists who came after them and often confused and mis-stated the high purpose and true nature of art.</p>

<p>I am very sure that John Howard Benson gets the fullest possible measure of human enjoyment from the honest employment of his skills, and that his life and work provide us with an authentic definition of an artist. When as many people come to understand the work of the true artist, as there are people who merely enjoy it, a new golden age of art will have come to the world.</p>

<p><strong>Matlack Price </strong></p>

<p><small>This article originally appeared in the March 1943 issue of <em>American Artist</em>. Thanks to designer-printer extraordinaire <a href=”http://katranpress.com” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','katranpress.com']);”>Michael Russem</a> for alerting TypoC to this article.</small></p>

<div id=”attachment_2452″ style=”width: 585px”><a href=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-letters.jpg” ><img title=”benson-model-letters” src=”http://typocurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/benson-letters.jpg” alt=”" width=”575″ height=”391″ /></a><p>Like the master-sculptors of ancient Egypt, Mr. Benson cuts model letters and numerals in stone, for study and reference. </p></div>

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