Noel Rooke

Noel Rooke (1881–1953) was an English wood engraver and artist. His ideas and teaching made a major contribution to the revival of British wood engraving in the twentieth century.

Rooke was born in Acton, in London, where he would remain all of his life. His father was Thomas Matthews Rooke, for many years the studio assistant of Edward Burne-Jones, and an accomplished artist in his own right. His mother Leonora Rooke (née Jones) had been governess to Burne-Jones's daughter, Margaret. Rooke studied in France at the Lycée de Chartres and then at the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, London. He completed his education at the Slade and the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

On 31 December 1932, Rooke married one of his pupils, Celia Mary Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes. She practised as a wood engraver under the short name of Celia Fiennes.

Rooke died at West London Hospital on 5 October 1953.

In 1899, aged 18, Rooke was employed by William Lethaby in the school holidays to make drawings of the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey. This was the start of a very fruitful association with Lethaby, who had become the first principal of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1896. He wanted it to become for design and the crafts what the Slade and the Royal Academy were for the fine arts.

Rooke joined the Central School as a student in 1899. In the same year the calligrapher Edward Johnston came to the Central School as a student, whereupon Lethaby immediately asked him to teach a class in calligraphy. His first class of seven students included Rooke, Eric Gill, Graily Hewitt, T.J. Cobden Sanderson, MacDonald Gill and Lawrence Christie. Johnston taught Rooke that the form of a letter should be determined by the tool making the letter, a principle which Rooke later applied to wood engraving. In 1904 Rooke also attended evening classes in wood engraving at the London County Council School of Photo-engraving and Lithography in Bolt Court, where he learned the skills of wood engraving from R. John Beedham. At the period Eric Gill gave classes in stone carving and inscriptions, and Rooke later gave Gill private lessons in wood engraving.

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