Walter Lewis (1878 - 1960)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Master Printer at the Cambridge University from 1925 to 1945. Lewis started his career as a reader at Butler & Tanner before progressing to the Ballantyne Press, London. He was appointed works manager of The Cloister Press, Manchester producing quality printing for the clients of C. W. Hobson’s advertising agency. In 1923 Lewis became Master Printer at the Cambridge University Press where he spent twenty-two years. He had great typographic sensitivity and foresight supervising the early and sometimes first uses of many Monotypes founts. Lewis’s work had nothing to do with ‘fine printing’, rather he recognised that important texts, essential to scientists or scholars, had to be produced with clear typographic structure and legibility. The quality of the impression, the even colour of the inking and the perfect register of the pages were another display of Lewis’ disciplined competence. [Source: The Typographic Hub website].