Lecture: Joseph Cribb

“My grandfather was the embodiment of Eric Gill’s intellectual mission”, says Joe Cribb. He’s talking about Joseph Cribb, who worked for the renowned arts-and-craftsman from 1906 (when he was just 14), to 1924, when Gill left Ditchling. “Gill was not very good at following his own teachings. He wanted to be an artist, as well as a craftsman. My grandfather followed his teachings very rigorously. He just wanted to get on with his job”. Joe will be giving a lecture about the role of Cribb in Gill’s career at the Ditchling Museum, a stone’s throw from Sopers, where Gill set up his first workshop in the Sussex village.

Gill, of course, has become as well known for his incestuous and bestial sexual indiscretions as his art. Cribb has been seen as being ‘an extension’ of Gill, but he was very much more single-mindedly work-oriented than his mentor. “My grandfather worked very closely with Gill on pieces such as the Stations of the Cross, in Westminster Cathedral,” continues Joe. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to distinguish my grandfather’s letter-cutting from Gill’s”. When Gill sickened of Ditchling and the Order of SS Joseph and Dominic he had set up with likeminded craftsmen, Cribb did not leave with him. “He continued on his own at the workshop”, says Joe. “He developed a distinctive style in the 20’s. You can see examples of his work all over Sussex, most notably the reliefs on the façade of the Allied Irish Bank in Brighton”. AL