Greta Bertram, Curator

The Crafts Study Centre houses one of the biggest and most comprehensive collections of twentieth century British calligraphy and lettering in the UK. We have work by about seventy calligraphers (see the full list here), but the collections are strongest in the work of the first two generations of calligraphers who emerged from the revival led by Edward Johnston in the early-twentieth century; and two of the largest bodies of work are those by Johnston himself and his pupil Irene Wellington. The collections expanded significantly in 2018 with the acquisition of the collections of the Edward Johnston Foundation, which contains about 10,000 items relating to the work of Johnston’s students, in particular Daisy Alcock, William Gardiner, Joan Pilsbury, Michael Renton and John Woodcock. This is going to form the basis of a very large cataloguing project in the future. 

Specifically, ‘calligraphy’ refers to decorative handwriting or handwritten lettering, while ‘lettercutting’ or ‘lettercarving’ refers to the carving of characters into the face of a piece of stone, or other material such as wood or metal. While the majority of the lettering collections at the CSC are examples of ‘calligraphy’, written on paper or vellum, there are a small number of works on stone – and several of these are on display in the Moving Forward: The Crafts Study Centre at 50 exhibition.

John Neilson is a lettercarver and lettering designer, and is also a lettering adviser on the CSC’s Acquisitions Committee. Describing the collection, he writes:

“Among these pieces are some gems. There is the famous Eric Gill garden roller inscribed with the final verse of the traditional English song The Seeds of Love. The inscription was done around 1920, when Gill was living on Ditchling Common, and was for the weaver Ethel Mairet.”

“There are three pieces each by Ralph Beyer and Tom Perkins. Beyer came to Gill’s workshop (by then at Pigotts in the Chiltern hills) in 1937 as a sixteen-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, and stayed with Gill for a few months, where he learned the rudiments of carved lettering and was deeply impressed by Gill’s personality and attitude to life. Later, Beyer would become something of a pioneer in a more informal style of carved lettering – most impressively seen in the huge ’Tablets of the Word’ in Coventry cathedral, carved in 1961. The three pieces at the CSC, Shatter me Music, Sing Sweetness, and Somewhat Closer to the Heart of Creation are fine examples of the kind of literary inscriptions Beyer made later in his life. The CSC acquired a large archive of drawings and rubbings by Beyer after his death in 2008.”

“Tom Perkins, likewise much influenced by Gill, has also found his own very different voice: his letters have a rigour and tautness of form second to none. His three pieces in the collection (one of which, And the Word was made Stone, appears on the cover of his influential book The Art of Letter Carving in Stone) are supplemented by three slate signs, including the large free-standing one in front of the building. The lettering Tom designed for this is used in the Centre’s logo.”

“The youngest lettercarver in the CSC collection is Gary Breeze, whose work is always conceptually inventive. Archimedes Blues II is a quote from a blues lyric (itself inspired by a quote from Archimedes) which has been translated into classical Greek.”

“The CSC has a small number of rubbings or drawings by lettercarvers David and Richard Kindersley, John Skelton, Ieuan Rees, Donald Potter, Sydney Bendall and Jack Trowbridge; and the recently acquired archive of the Edward Johnston Foundation includes work by, among others, Michael Renton. Considerations of space permitting, it would be good to acquire actual carving by these and other twentieth-century and current practitioners, given that lettercarving remains a relatively thriving craft in Britain.”

With thanks to John Neilson.