Barnett Freedman

Barnett Freedman CBE RDI (19 May 1901 – 4 January 1958) was a British painter, commercial designer, book illustrator, typographer, and lithographer.

He attended evening classes at Saint Martin's School of Art, hoping to win a London County Council scholarship.

He married a fellow student, Beatrice Claudia Guercio; and, after hard times, gained an introduction to the publishers, Faber and Gwyer, for whom he illustrated Laurence Binyon's Wonder Night, in the Ariel Poems series.

[7] Faber gave Freedman his first major commission, an assignment to design and illustrate Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.

Freedman had by that time become interested in the difficult medium of auto-lithography, where the artist draws his own designs on to the stones without the intervention of a trade craftsmen or photomechanical means.

[6] Freedman received advice from T. E. Griffits, the most influential lithographer of the time, who held sway at Vincent Brooks, Day & Son.

He developed a technique whereby the black and white illustrations printed by line block simulated lithography, bringing a unity to the book.

Other book jackets designed by Freedman during this period included those for Dance of the Quick and the Dead by Sacheverell Sitwell and Inhale and Exhale by William Saroyan, both of which were published in 1936 by Faber.

[11] Among Freedman's later book designs were those for the 1952 print of The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola and the 1953 edition of The Devil Rides Outside by John Howard Griffin.

[14] Among his last works were a series of lithographs, including a poster The Darts Champion, to promote the first Guinness Book of World Records published.