‘Letter by Michael Renton to Harriet Frazer’

8-page manuscript book written out in Chinese ink on beige handmade paper with gouache illustrations, orange Zerkall endpapers, card cover, plain paper jacket. Completed June 2020

This letter is quoted by Harriet Frazer in her introductory essay to His Hands Magic’, the catalogue which accompanied the retrospective exhibition of Michael Renton’s work at the Lettering Arts Trust in 2015.

I only met Michael on a very small number of occasions, but the memory of those conversations always brings a smile as I recall his gentle sense of humour. His self-deprecating manner belied an enormous range of skills, but it is the way in which he integrated his beliefs and sense of craftsmanship into the fabric of his life which most impresses me.

He makes this explicit in this letter, where he states that our attitude to memorials ‘ is potentially a touchstone of many things . . . of the place of art in belief and daily life; of spiritual priorities, our understanding of what constitutes humanity, and of the sacramental nature of things.’