A 1983 poster for the Victoria and Albert Museum shows a letter cutter with corduroy trousers, braces and a shapeless hat standing at the base of an inscription cut into the terracotta wall announcing in flaming gilded capitals its opening as the Henry Cole Wing, now sadly obscured by the new entrance paving. The artist appearing in the photograph was Simon Verity, who has died aged 79, whose later career in the US left much more visible traces, including the array of prophets carved on the west portal of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York.
A master sculptor and stone carver, in the UK he created grottoes, churchyard memorials for a range of 20th-century figures (including John Betjeman) and English ecclesiastical work.
