RA Collection: People and Organisations
The Lion and Unicorn Press was founded in 1954 at the Royal College of Art, London.
Named after the Festival of Britain’s Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion, the Lion and Unicorn Press was established with the aim of producing finely designed and typeset books, illustrated, printed and bound at the Royal College of Art.
"The primary aim of the Lion and Unicorn Press... is to publish each year a few volumes in limited editions, which it is hoped will reach the highest standards of book production in typographic design, illustration and binding and in so doing to discover and foster new ability and new ideas in each field." [RCA Annual Report, 1953/4].
The enterprise aimed to capture the sentiment of Richard Guyatt’s inaugural lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Arts in 1950, in support of the new School of Graphic Design: "I hope that in my School young designers will learn, with their heads, the reason for their designs – their function as designers, the scope and possibility in their chosen profession; that in their hearts this knowledge will be quickened by the excitement of designing, the delight in the search for harmony; and finally, that their hands will learn the skill to do justice to their inspiration and enable them to carry out their work as professionals."
Sir Hugh Casson PRA
Red lacquer days : an illustrated journal describing a recent visit to Peking - London: 1956
13/1887
Aristophanes
The birds / [by] Aristophanes ; an English version by Dudley Fitts, with a new series of illustrations by Quentin Blake - London: 1971
14/5046
David Posner
A rake's progress : a poem in five sections - London: 1967
15/2140
Eric Ravilious
The wood engravings of Eric Ravilious - [London] (Royal College of Art, Exhibition Rd, S.W.7): 1972
08/1372