William Sharpington


William Sharpington was a British lettering artist who worked in sign painting and the design of monuments. In the view of John Nash and Gerald Fleuss, his workshop "produced, from the 40s to the 60s, some of the most distinguished public lettering in England".

Early life

The son of a baker, Sharpington studied at the City and Guilds of London Art School and started his career working as an assistant in the workshop of Percy Delf Smith from about 1920 to 1935. He then set up his own practice which continued through the post-war period. At the time it was normal to use custom painted or carved lettering for large signs because of the inflexibility of printing large fonts using letterpress, before the arrival of large-size printing technologies like vinyl sign cutters and computer fonts.

Career

Delf Smith and his teacher Edward Johnston, influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, had established a style of fine lettering rooted in Roman square capitals which had quickly become a standard for prestigious lettering like monuments and memorials. Sharpington also worked in this style, with use of italics, calligraphy and swashes. Nick Garrett, a modern day London based Traditional signwriter, comments that Sharpington's style uses the general square letterform spacing of the Trajan capitals. He also combined lowercase letters in upright and italic variations. Lower case letterforms arrived in the late 8th and early 9th centuries with the emergence of Carolingian minuscule — a calligraphic penned script championed under Charlemagne to bring clarity and consistency to writing across Europe. Developed by scholars such as Alcuin of York, it introduced the forms that later evolved into the printed versions of lowercase alphabets we use today. Sharpington's variation
Lettering examples by Sharpington are held by the Crafts Study Centre.
Sharpington designed lettering art, such as memorials and hand painted signs himself, but generally drew out art work 'layouts' or 'patterns' for others, mainly stone masons, to cut into stone. He taught and had his workshop at the City and Guilds of London Art School and was made a Royal Academician in 1949, while also becoming a member of the Art Workers' Guild. His assistants and subcontractors included Kenneth Breese, Ron Burnett, Bob DuVivier and Donald Jackson and his pupils included Michael Renton, Vera Ibbett and Stephen Lubell, whose article on him made with Burnett's assistance is one of the main sources on his life.
Sharpington was a Freemason in a lodge with Oliver, and later with Jackson. He died in 1973 and was commemorated with a plaque at St Bride's Church, a former client.

Legacy

Much of Sharpington's artwork was painted or made of wood and ephemeral, like signs for London County Council for schools and vaccination clinics. As a result, much of it no longer exists: by 1989 Dr. John Nash commented that "much of the beautiful work done by Sharpington's workshop during the Fifties is now gone". In addition, tastes changed and the practice of signwriting declined after his career, meaning his work was often not replaced with similar designs.
However, photographs exist of some of his lost work and other examples survive which were made of stone or kept indoors in protected locations such as government buildings and churches. The Diocese of Southwark archives list correspondence with him on various projects.

Extant work