Will Carter

b. 1912

d. 2001, Cambridge

William Carter was born in 1912. At the age of 16 Carter became apprenticed to a printers in Woking, where he started to learn the skills that would see him years later acknowledged as a master craftsman of print, typography and calligraphy. In 1935 Carter taught himself to carve wood and later, in 1948, learnt, under the tutelage of David Kindersley, to stone carve. In 1949 Carter established his own previously private press, Rampant Lions Press, on a commercial basis. Significant works produced by Carter under the Rampant Lion Press imprint include William Morris’s ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ (1974). Carter also designed two fonts for Monotype: Klang and Octavian. Carter worked on books for a large list of distinguished writers and artists, including, amongst many others, Paula Rego and Ted Hughes. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has presented two significant exhibitions of the work of Rampant Lion Press, in 1982 and 2014. Will Carter lived and worked in Cambridge until his death in 2001.