William Sharpington

William Sharpington (Sharpington was sometimes called .) (Sharpington preferred the term "lettering artist" to describe his work, rather than "sign writing", feeling that the term did not do lettering work due credit, something both Jackson and DuVivier independently remembered about him when interviewed separately.) 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

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 (Interviewed years later for an oral history project, Jackson commented that Sharpington tended to charge prices that were too low: "he just didn't have a feel for what it ought to be ...) he realised that the best thing to do was to give me the job and I was to give him the cut so I would get straight to the client". 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.

Gallery

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 (even as mundane as a "No Parking" sign to go at the entrance to a North London park). 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". (Giving a memorial lecture to Delf Smith in 1946, M. C. Oliver commented that Sharpington "specializes in painted lettering of fine quality".) and other examples survive which were made of stone or kept indoors in protected locations such as government buildings and churches.

Extant work London Scottish Regiment Chapel, St Columba's Church, London Memorial to John Collis Browne, Ramsgate, Kent (1973) British Museum, staff war memorial (1939–1945 section only; the First World War section is by Eric Gill) War memorial, interior of St Anne's Church, Kew Memorial to Sir Theodore Chambers, Parkway, Welwyn Garden City, monument designed by Louis de Soissons (c. 1961) Roosevelt Memorial, Grosvenor Square, lettering Plaque marking York Water Gate, Victoria Embankment Gardens A History of English Life (1936), book, lettering on maps and charts Memorial to Edith Somerville and Violet Florence Martin, Saint Barrahane's Church, Castletownshend, Ireland