David Kindersley
Encyclopedia
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
stone letter-carver
Letter cutting
Letter cutting is a form of inscriptional architectural lettering closely related to monumental masonry and stone carving, often practiced by artists, sculptors and typeface designers. Rather than traditional stone carving, where images and symbols are the dominant features, in letter cutting it is...
and typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
designer, and the founder of the Kindersley Workshop (later the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop). His carved plaques and inscriptions in stone and slate can be seen on many churches and public buildings in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Kindersley was a designer of the Octavian font for Monotype in 1961, and he and his third wife Lida Lopes Cardozo designed the main gates for the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
.
Early life
Codicote
Codicote is a large village, and civil parish about seven miles south of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. It has timber-framed and chequered brick houses, of special interest being the 18th-century Pond House and the half-timbered "As You Like It" Peking restaurant . Codicote Lodge is 18th...
near Hitchin
Hitchin
Hitchin is a town in Hertfordshire, England, with an estimated population of 30,360.-History:Hitchin is first noted as the central place of the Hicce people mentioned in a 7th century document, the Tribal Hidage. The tribal name is Brittonic rather than Old English and derives from *siccā, meaning...
, the son of Major Guy Molesworth Kindersley
Guy Molesworth Kindersley
Guy Molesworth Kindersley was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom who represented Hitchin, Hertfordshire....
(a stockbroker and MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
) and the grandson on his mother's side of the Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
potter Sir Edmund Elton
Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet
Sir Edmund Harry Elton, 8th Baronet was an English inventor and studio potter noted for his production of Elton Ware at the Clevedon Elton Sunflower Pottery....
. He was educated at St Cyprian's School
St Cyprian's School
St Cyprian's School was an English preparatory school for boys, which operated in the early 20th century in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Like other preparatory schools, its purpose was to train pupils to do well enough in the examinations to gain admission to leading public schools, and to provide an...
, Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
, where "he had a wonderful time", becoming head boy, and the sharpness of his eye was shown by his outstanding skill at shooting. He claimed that "aiming at the centre has always been an inherent quality with him". His elder brother, Hallam, died at Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
whilst Kindersley was still at St Cyprian's. Kindersley went on to Marlborough College
Marlborough College
Marlborough College is a British co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils, located in Marlborough, Wiltshire.Founded in 1843 for the education of the sons of Church of England clergy, the school now accepts both boys and girls of all beliefs. Currently there are just over 800...
, but left after three years because of rheumatoid arthritis.
After recovery, Kindersley was sent to Paris to learn French and study sculpture at the Academie St. Julian and then with the Iduni brothers in London. He read the books of Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
, and decided to become a stone-cutter. He became an apprentice to Gill in his workshop at Pigotts High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
in December 1934, with the support of his father who, liking to do things the proper way, insisted on paying an apprenticeship indemnity. He worked on important commissions, including Bentall's store in Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
, St. John's College, Oxford and Dorset House.
Independent activity
Kindersley left Gill's workshop in 1936 and set up his own workshop on the River ArunRiver Arun
The Arun is a river in the English county of West Sussex. Its source is a series of small streams in the St Leonard's Forest area, to the east of Horsham...
, where he still worked on commission for Gill. He married his first wife, Christina, at the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and ran "The Smith's Arms" a tiny pub (reputed to be the smallest in England) with her in Godmanstone, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
. As a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
he refused to be put in a position where he would have to kill, although he applied (and was rejected) for the Home Guard. On the death of Eric Gill in 1940, Kindersley spent time sorting out the affairs of Gill's workshop at Pigotts.
Cambridge workshops
In 1945, Kindersley moved to CambridgeshireCambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
and set up his first fully-fledged letter-cutting workshop at Dales Barn in the village of Barton
Barton, Cambridgeshire
Barton is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. It is about south-west of Cambridge, near junction 12 of the M11 motorway.- History :...
. During this time, Kindersley developed his work and methods as he broke away from Gill, in his decorative embellishments of cutting, in his growing predilection for lettering on slate and the combination of lettering with heraldry. Nevertheless, in the organisation of the workshop there was still a sense of dynastic inheritance. At this time he also started teaching calligraphy at Cambridge Art School, having initially gone to enrol for the course. He had a major commission carving relief maps for the American War Cemetery and also became a consultant for film titles through his cousin Sir Arthur Elton who was in charge of film making at Shell Oil
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
.
Kindersley was preoccupied in the 1950s and 1960s by the survival of the workshop culture in a post-war climate of industrial expansion. He was a leading figure in the Designer Craftsman Society and the Crafts Council
Crafts Council
The Crafts Council was established in the United Kingdom in 1971 as the national agency for crafts and was granted a Royal Charter in 1982. The Crafts Council’s vision is to position the UK as the global centre for the making, seeing and collecting of contemporary craft...
of Great Britain. He became Chairman of the Crafts Council for a while, but stepped down because of concerns about underfunding.
Kindersley invented a system for the accurate spacing of letters, which though often praised, has not seen wide adoption. Kindersley's work in this area formed the basis of an artist's project by his former assistant the calligrapher Owen Williams called Testing David. In 1952 he submitted a design, MoT Serif, to the British Ministry of Transport, who required new lettering to use on United Kingdom road signs. Although the Road Research Laboratory found Kindersley's design more legible, the all-capitals design with serifs was passed over in favour of that of Jock Kinneir
Jock Kinneir
Richard 'Jock' Kinneir was a typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Margaret Calvert, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom. Their system has become a model for modern road signage....
and Margaret Calvert
Margaret Calvert
Margaret Calvert is a typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout Great Britain, as well as the Transport font used on road signs and the Rail Alphabet font used on the British railway system and an early version of the signs...
. Many of the street signs in England, especially in Cambridge, use Kindersley fonts. Amongst his apprentices of this period was his son Richard, who has continued the lettering tradition from his own workshop in London since 1970.
In 1967 Kindersley moved the workshop from Barton to the 14th-century Chesterton Tower in Cambridge in 1967 and then, ten years later, to the converted infants' school in Victoria Road where his widow Lida continues to run the workshop and take on apprentices.
Kindersley was not formally religious, but had a strongly contemplative side. He had an essentially spiritual view of the workshop and his ideas of wholeness as the integration of home and work was a development of Gill's 'cell of good living in the chaos of our world'. He was deeply influenced by the writings of the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky
P. D. Ouspensky
Peter D. Ouspensky , , a Russian esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915.He was associated with the ideas and practices originating with...
and for a time a member of the Walker Group, an Ouspenskyist self-help discussion group in London.
His book Graphic Sayings also shows plates bearing sayings of the Sufi
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...
mystics
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
from the works of the writer Idries Shah
Idries Shah
Idries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi , was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.Born in India, the descendant of a...
.
In January 2000 a memorial plaque designed by Kindersley's widow Lida was unveiled at Addenbrooke's Hospital
Addenbrooke's Hospital
Addenbrooke's Hospital is an internationally renowned teaching hospital in Cambridge, England, with strong links to the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1766 on Trumpington Street with £4,500 from the will of Dr John Addenbrooke, a fellow of St Catharine's College...
, joining over 20 other plaques and inscriptions created by the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop. The first plaque had commemorated the opening of the new hospital in 1962.
Kindersley's children by his first marriage include Peter Kindersley
Peter Kindersley
Peter Kindersley was the co-founder of the publishing company Dorling Kindersley and ran it with Christopher Dorling from 1974, until he sold his family stake for £105m in 2000...
co-founder of Dorling-Kindersley.
Publications
- David Kindersley (1971). Graphic Sayings. Cambridge: Kindersley & Skelton. No ISBN.
- David Kindersley (1976). Optical letter spacing for new printing systems Lund Humphries, 2nd Edition.
- David Kindersley and Lida Lopes Cardozo (1981). Letters Slate Cut: workshop practice and the making of letters. London: Lund Humphries. ISBN 0853314292.