mixed-blue mosaic occupying the central area of the facade. The date is cut in relief at either end. Public Lettering: a bike ride 53 Charterhouse Street : The Central Cold Storage . By C S Peach 1899, for margarine manufacturers van den Bergh, and, since 1990 a power generating plant. Grand faiençe cartouche on facade with nicely detailed street num - for TypoLondon 2012 bers in shields on columns at street level. 1 Nos.79–83: Meat Inspection Offices by the Corporation of Engineer’s Department, 1930. Euston Road: British Library . While the railway sta - Lovely decorative carved relief panels by H H Martyn & Co tions next door use their architecture to announce them - across the top of the building. selves, the new British Library sits back from the road and 3 John Street . Built as a butcher’s shop and offices. approached through the dramatic gates and across an Has a fine gable enlivened by carved panel showing a wild enclosed garden. The gates themselves, by David 2 boar in relief with the awkwardly arranged text, ‘rebuilt W Kindersley’s workshop, do not contain lettering, they are let - Harris 1897’. Flanking the top-storey windows are two tering. BRITISH LIBRARY is repeated and progresses from smaller, shallower carved panels, one containing a mono - ‘light’ to ‘ultra black’. Having seen the gates, the lettering gram, the other a shield. above – carved, raised letters on red sandstone – seems 115 Charterhouse Street: Fox & Anchor . Art Nouveau superfluous, and if judged on its own merits, the over-large faciençe façade from 1898 by W J Neatby of Doulton’s. This definite article dominates quite unnecessarily. incorporates lettering and ornament with tiled panels inset Marchmont Street | Tavistock Place | Gordon Square | Byng Place 3 0 0

at ground level and mosaic lettered thresholds either side. 2 Mallet Street/ Keppel Street: Institute of Hygiene & a d i

119 Charterhouse Street : monogram and date carved h Tropical Medicine P Morley Horder & Verner O Rees, s o Y

in relief, parish boundaries on cast iron plates. o

1926–8. A real feast. Names of medical scientists, in relief k 3 i h c within framed panels, form a frieze on all three sides of the a M Street names building at high level; on panels above the doors – again on Background The Victorians and Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon Other material on signs and each façade – can be seen the name of the building; on the Public lettering, a walk in Edwardians were very straight - are freelance designers, writers public lettering central London was written by forward about this, choosing and teachers of typography at Alan Bartram, Lettering in architec - gates are HTM monograms; on the Keppel & Mallet Street Phil Baines for the 1997 ATypI robust letterforms and long-last - Central Saint Martins College of Art ture , Lund Humphries 1975 corner is a carved foundation stone; and on each corner conference. In 2002 this was ing materials. & Design, London. Recent work Nicolete Gray, Lettering on buildings , there are elegant street names. All are fine, almost geomet - made into a website (www.publi - Among the best post-war solu - includes lettering for the Architectural Press 1960 clettering.org.uk) by Jack tions are the City of 7 July 2005 London Bombings Jock Kinneir, Words and buildings: ric sanserifs, perhaps by Percy Delft-Smith. Schulze, Matt Hyde & George signs designed by Misha Black Memorial and designing the book the art and practice of public letter - Gower Street Agnelli and the original text was and the DRU in the 1960s ( 1). which documents the making of the ing , Architectural Press 1980 53 New Oxford Street: Ja mes Smith & Sons considerably expanded by us A clear typographic arrangement memorial; design of a set of let - James Mosley, The nymph and the both. using Univers Bold Condensed tered steel doors for the newly ren - grot , Friends of the St Bride (Umbrellas) Ltd , 1857, remains a rare example of To simplify matters we con - on enamelled steel with the ovated Pozza Palace, Dubrov nik; Printing Library 1999 Victorian commercial London: mirrored glass, engraved centrate on larger examples and 25mm return giving them consid - and cover designs for six titles in See also his blog brass and half-round section timber lettering on rails all have don’t mention incidental lettering erable presence. the fifth set of the acclaimed typefoundry.blogspot.com/ – stop-cocks, manholes, dates on By contrast the alphabet Penguin Books Great Ideas series. James Sutton, Signs in action , a part to play. buildings, builders marks, &c – of designed by David Kindersley Their writing on aspects of public Studio Vista 1965 Street | High |Shaftesbury Avenue | Monmouth which there is much en route . and used widely throughout the lettering includes: On architectural matters Street | Upper St Martin’s Lane | St Martin’s Lane Much of the pleasure of this kind country ( 2) shows too much Simon Bradley & Nikolaus Pevsner, Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon, May’s Court: The Colesium . A glorious example of let - of walk, is finding things yourself. respect to history and is ill-suited Signs, lettering in the environment, The buildings of England, London Although also ‘public’, we gener - to flimsy pressed aluminium. Laurence King 2008 (2003) 1: The , Yale 2002 tering proclaiming the name of a building on the side rather ally ignore advertising hoardings, Only in Bath where it is reversed- And on the web Bridget Cherry & Nikolaus Pevsner, than the front of the building. The letters are formed out of but discussion will necessarily out of black does it have any BoE, London 4: North , Penguin www.publiclettering.org.uk three courses of large terracotta blocks, their ‘curvilinear’ include shop signs and corporate presence. The website which grew out of 1998 identities even though these are A more recent conservationist our early walks with students, in —, BoE, London 6: Westminster , Yale style is typical of 1904 when the theatre was built and simi - usually approached as pieces of approach was adopted around need of updating when we have 2003 lar in many ways to the tiled lettering on the Leslie Green graphic design rather than Regent’s Street: this ( 3) is the On London a bit more time. (red tiled) underground stations. opportunities for specialist, site- second version, the first was too Some of our other pictures on Peter Ackroyd, London, the biogra - specific lettering. small to be read from across the this subject matter can be found phy , Chatto & Windus 2000. Bedfordbury | Chandos Place Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon road. They have no redeeming on our Flickr pages: V S Pritchet, London perceived , St Martin’s Mews: St Martin’s Schools . This is a good qualities, and why, as here, dupli - Penguin 2003 (1962) flickr.com/photos/phil_baines teaching aid: compare the top and middle lines, even if you @sarkytype cate information? flickr/photos/catherinedixon @thinkingtype 4 1 can’t explain precisely what good lettering is, the top and St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been on this site middle lines do it for you. The top line is well positioned but since its foundation in 1123, and refounding by Henry VIII has weak letters, the date has good letters but is incredibly in 1546. Architecturally the centrepiece is Gibb’s central-fac - cramped. The middle line is near perfect, what Bartram calls ing courtyard ensemble (1730 –68) but later buildings now the ‘english letter’, robust, even proportions for all the letters surround these and face outwards. From the South: (unlike the roman model), and a strong contrast between —Outpatients’ department by E B l’Anson, assisted by 1 thick and thin strokes. Note too that the success of public Rowland Plumbe, 1903 –7. This features rather spindly lettering depends not just on the letterforms but on how applied lettering to its southern end wall, and, on the 1 they work within their place on the building and with the Giltspur Street façade ‘SBH’ and date monograms. architecture as a whole. —Library & museum by Edward l’Anson (E B’s father), St Martin’s Place | Trafalgar Square | The Mall | Horse Guards Road 1877 –9, features large scale carved lettering as a frieze in Guards Division Memorial , by Harold Charlton the Renaisance manner. The scale and ambition is not Bradshaw (architect) & Gilbert Ledward (sculptor) 1926. A matched by the quality of the lettersforms themselves. memorial with echoes of Lutyens’ non-denominational The end wall of a narrow, 1963 –70, extension by Adams, abstraction and some affinity to the Royal Artillery Holden & Pearson separates the library from E B l’Anson’s Memorial by Lional Pearson & Charles Sargeant Jaegger at 1907 –9 Pathological Block 16 which has a similar frieze Hyde Park Corner. The inscription is all about an even tex - of lettering with identical issues. 2 ture of confident, strong lettering (which doesn’t quite con - —Gatehouse , 1702, designed by Edward Strong Junior, but form to the Macdonald Gill Imperial War Graves reconstructed and refaced by Philip Hardwick in 1833 –4. Traffic signs Commission style). The lettering feels more like the original date, rich but rather Before 1964 road signage in Britain used an anonymous caps Horse Guards Road | Birdcage Walk | Storey’s Gate | Tothill Street untutored. Compare it with the lettering above the disused only sans serif type, black on a 55 Broadway , Charles Holden’s HQ building for the entrance to 19 the Receiving Rooms (towards Little white panel within a larger Underground Group with relief carvings Eric Gill (high) & Britain) by Philip Hardwick, 1842 & 1861, which is a very coloured sign (blue or yellow according to class of road). Jacob Epstein (low). A noteworthy early cruciform plan to robust and self-confident English letter. There are quite a number of allow maximum daylight inside. Metropolitan drinking fountain & cattle trough these older signs in use in central New Scotland Yard , spinning sign with lettering by Ed association . Key characters to look out for here are the London today ( 1). The system now used is that Wright 1968, disfigured by the addition of the crest and slo - angular ampersand, and a capital C and G which are only designed by Kinneir Calvert fol - gan c.1998 but restored and re-instated in 2012. Wright’s very subtly differentiated. lowing recommendations made playfull geometrically-derived lettering is also used at small Long Lane | Smithfield Street by the Worboys Committee and the style they had already scale inside for all the door plates and original signing. 6–7 West Smithfield , Carved lion with shield, reads designed for the Preston by-pass Victoria Street | Artillery Row | Greycoat Place | Lambeth Bridge | ‘Justice and strength’. In 1867, Thomas Herbert, scalemak - (now part of the M6) in 1958. Lambeth Road er, acquired the business of Henry Wood (est.1760) at this The alphabet itself is sans St George’s Circus : Obelisk and milestone , erected by serif, carefully spaced to ensure 2 address, and the firm became known as known as Thomas legibility at long distances, and the Blackfriars Bridge Committee in 1771 as the formal Herbert & Sons. The company is now The Herbert Group different versions are provided Railways southern termination of a mile long boulevard leading to but, since 1968, has been based in Haverhill. for reversed out or black letter - Corporate identities such as their recently completed bridge. Very fine square-section ing. Signs have different coloured London ’s or British West Poultry Avenue | Charterhouse Street (and latterly, reflective) back - Rail’s have concentrated very incised English letters. Smithfield Market . The central market buildings were grounds for different classes of much on signage and allowed the Blackfriars Road designed by Sir Horace Jones and constructed in 1866 –7 road – blue for motorways, green proud displays of station or com - (Former) Charing Cross Railway, Blackfriars for A roads, white for local signs pany names on existing buildings after the old cattle market moved to the Caledonian Fields – and the size of the signs them - to remain( 1). Station , opened 1864, closed 1868 (and replaced by north of King’s Cross in 1855. To the West are the Poultry selves differs because it is deter - The alphabet by Waterloo East). Typical nineteenth century cast stucco Market (1962 –3 by T P Bennet & Sons) and the General mined by the content ( 2). Kinneir Calvert was created as a sanserif letters announce the station’s name. This façade Although there was much tiled system to enable correctly Market flanking Farringdon Street (1879 –83 also controversy about the relative spaced signs to be assembled by was restored in 2005. by Jones). merits of sans serif versus serif untrained staff. This contour let - Blackfriars’ Bridge | New Bridge Street Port of London Authority cold store by T H Smith, lettering (see Design 129, ter ( 2) shows how the optical Ludgate Circus (NE corner) Ludgate House (Horace September 1959, pp.28–32, and correction necessary for black on 1914. Square-section carved letters at the top of the build - 152, August 1961, pp.56–61 for white or reversed-out type is Gundry 1872 –3). Formerly Thomas Cook’s. The best typo - ing (= May the gates of the empire flourish) are overshad - contemporary accounts), in this achieved. The smaller letters graphic clock in London. owed by the splendid, carved, curvilinear letters, inlaid with context at least, nothing very show variants to the standard tile Ludgate Hill | Old Bailey | Giltspur Street conclusive seems to have been space. proved either way.

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