University of Sunderland

Prof Ewan Clayton

Born in 1956 Ewan Clayton grew up near Ditchling, Sussex, home to the calligrapher Edward Johnston, the type designer Eric Gill and the artist poet and inscription maker David Jones. Having graduated in 1979 with a Joint Hons. MA in Medieval History with Psychology from the University of St. Andrews Ewan trained as a calligrapher and bookbinder with Ann Camp at the Roehampton Institute, London. He then established his workshop at Ditchling Sussex in the Guild of craftsmen founded by Gill in the 1920s, where three generations of his family had lived and worked as silk weavers. From the 1990s onwards Ewan worked as a part time consultant at the Palo Alto Research Centre of the Xerox Corporation (PARC) and co-founded The Edward Johnston Foundation in Ditchling. He has curated exhibitions and published on Codes and Messages - Contemporary Lettering (for the Crafts Council) 1996, Handwriting Everyone Art (1998), Calligraphy, Sumner Stone and Digital Type (1999), Contemporary Calligraphy East and West (2000-1), David Jones (2004), Edward Johnston (2006). His work has been exhibited in many countries in Europe, North America and East Asia. He is a trustee of the Crafts Study Centre at The University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, and the new Centre for Islamic Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, and vice-chair of the Shu Fa (Chinese Calligraphy) Society for Europe. Since 2006 he has been Professor in Design at the University of Sunderland.

Research Interests

Based on experience growing up and working in a craft community founded by Eric Gill and then working as a consultant at Xerox PARC (the research centre that developed the first networked computer, the laser printer and Ethernet), Ewan¿s interests encompass human computer interaction, the place of technologies and craft in communication, and the history of writing. His practice as a calligrapher focuses on gestural based work - often informed by cross-cultural connections. As an educator he interested in developing the theoretical underpinnings of western calligraphy and lettering.

Research Activities

Alongside Dr Manny Ling Ewan helps develop the work of The International Research Centre for Calligraphy (IRCC) at the university. The biannual international `Writing Symposiums' (run since 1999), directed by the centre, have created a lively research culture in the lettering arts at the university and a growing international network of contacts. Ewan's own research at present is concentrated on a major history of writing, The Written Word, to be published by Atlantic in 2012. In his practice as an exhibiting artist Ewan's upcoming projects touch on the transnational experience of war - and conflict resolution. As part of his focus on the theoretical basis of calligraphy Ewan has developed a paper (and a series of workshops) on the calligraphic understandings and breakthroughs that underpin western typographic development for presentation, as a key-note speaker, at ISTYPE in Istanbul 2011.