Richard Kindersley, who has died aged 86, was a letter cutter, letter designer and sculptor, as well as a teacher and mentor with a passion for materials and architecture. Although the very opposite of a luddite, he remained true to the belief that handwork has a special value, offering a unique coordination between hand and eye, and the gift of the maker’s creativity to the viewer.
This passionate belief, however, was never to conflict with his desire to integrate his lettering with modern architecture, beginning with his work for William Holford in the late 1960s at Exeter University. Left to themselves, many architects fell back on variations of typefaces such as Univers or Helvetica, which may have worked for internal signage but not externally. Kindersley put down a marker early with his rugged cast concrete letters announcing the “CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SS PETER & PAUL”, the Roman Catholic masterpiece by the Percy Thomas Partnership in Clifton, Bristol, completed in 1973, the entire building “a sermon in concrete”.
