Stephen Raw Papers

Date range: 1985-1995

Medium: Archive

Papers of Stephen Raw, letter artist and book-jacket designer.

Born in 1952, Raw trained and then taught at Manchester Polytechnic in the 1970s, before moving to Papua New Guinea to lecture in typography and lettering at the National Arts School, Port Moresby. For many years he has been a freelance letter artist, work he combined with a role as visiting lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art for 15 years, as well as tutoring work on the MA Design course at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The archive consists exclusively of material relating to Raw’s work for poetry publishers Carcanet Press, for whom he was book-jacket designer from 1985. There are two classes of material: artist’s files containing visual and written letters relating to particular book covers; and artist’s roughs of book covers. These provide an excellent representation of the process of letter art, book-jacket design and book production.

Further information:

Uncatalogued.

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library