Blair Rowlands Hughes-Stanton (22 February 1902 – 6 June 1981) was a major figure in the English wood-engraving revival in the twentieth century.

At the age of 13 Hughes-Stanton, unable to face the prospect of home life with his three sisters,[2] joined the Royal Navy training ship HMS Conway.

At the age of 19 he switched direction completely after a conversation with his father, the Royal Academician Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton, and joined the Byam Shaw School of Art.

At Brook Green the American wood engraver Marion Mitchell introduced him to wood-engraving, which set the direction of his life.

[5] Other commissions followed and, in the next few years, he illustrated with wood engravings three tall folios for the Cresset Press – The Pilgrim's Progress (1928), The Apocrypha (1929) and D. H. Lawrence's Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1930).

In 1925 he fell in love with Gertrude Hermes, a fellow student at Brook Green and another member of the Underwood inner circle.

In 1930 Hughes-Stanton and Hermes, along with William McCance and Agnes Miller Parker, were appointed in various capacities to the artistic and business management of the Gregynog Press.

Some of the board at Gregynog felt that Hughes-Stanton's wood engravings were too erotic, and his personal conduct was upsetting Margaret and Gwendoline Davies, who owned the press.

Hughes-Stanton wrote in his first prospectus, "I have founded the Gemini Press to be able, when occasion arises and unhampered by any outside prejudices, to make books in which there is a real fusion between contemporary writer and artist.

[9] At the start of the Second World War, Hughes-Stanton, like many other artists, undertook camouflage work before he enlisted in the British Army.

Back in England he wrote to the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) in November 1943, seeking a painting commission.

He died in 1981, and his ashes were scattered on the River Stour, Suffolk, by his two friends from the local pub, Peter and Joe.

[13] Although he did some work in oils and spent a great deal of time experimenting with linocuts in his later years, Hughes-Stanton's artistic production consists mostly of wood engravings.

[14] Clare Leighton wrote of him: "Of the same school is Blair Hughes Stanton (sic), equally brilliant, if not superior, in craftsmanship.