by PHIL SUREY

The starting point for this alphabet is brush lettering, of which a couple of threads have come together. The first is an observation that when painting a block letter in acrylic paints (one stroke with a flat brush), the point at which each stroke overlaps another a differing texture or tone is left. The marks of each brush stroke within a letter reveals how that letter was constructed, and is a record of the painters movement, meaning a letter can be read just as well as the word it forms. 

Before this I had been taught brush lettering at the C & G of London Art School by Tom Kemp who instructed us in the finer points of the Trajan inscription (a roman letterform) in the style of Father Catich. This is a technically demanding form of painting or writing with a brush that requires an overlapping and blending of the curved strokes, which I have incorporated into this carved form.

A heavier form of this alphabet was used for an inscription at Stowe School where it was directly carved to the Bath Stone blockwork of a newly built science block, hence its name.’

White marble and gold leaf 16.5 x 42.5 cm.