James Hill

Saint Eustachius, Tavistock

Type
Identity
Year
2026
Status
Proposal
Horizontal lockup: an engraved stag's head whose antlers enclose a cross-shaped counterform, beside the words Saint Eustachius, Tavistock Parish Church in a humanist script typeface.
Horizontal lockup.

Saint Eustachius is the patron saint of Tavistock's parish church. In his legend, a stag appears to him with a crucifix between its antlers.

I wanted to give the mark a craft materiality. Tavistock Abbey was printing books by 1525, one of the first presses in England outside London. The church's Clothworkers' Aisle came out of the town's cloth trade. The space is very material in and of itself, architecturally. There is heritage there. So the treatment combines paper printing and wood carving, with flat variations in the finished system that scale.

Black and white view of a granite tor, stacked slabs of weathered rock against cloud, with a torn lower edge.
Tor near Tavistock. Screenshot of a 3D scan I took, used in developing the identity.
The parish's existing mark: a grey stag's head beneath a yellow cross, inside a black pointed-arch frame.
The parish's existing mark.
Four lockups of the mark. The first carries handwritten notes: cross counterform; held gaze with viewer in regard; antler tines re-expressed in humanist typeface; craft materiality treatment. The others: stacked with small capitals, a circular seal, and an arched badge with Tavistock Parish Church set below.
Lockup explorations.
Working artboard: reference photographs of Tavistock, lockup explorations, the mark rendered on a wood-toned surface, and full-body stag studies.
Working board.

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