I think it was the very end of 1994 – just weeks before his death – when I met David Kindersley, one of the world’s greatest typographers and letter-cutters, for the one and only time.  I had traveled to Cambridge from London for a job interview.  It had gone well and after my meeting I had spent a little time visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum where I picked up in the gift shop some postcards, one of which was an example of letter cutting by a craftsman called David Kindersley.  I had never heard of him but the typeface reminded me of the great artist and typographer Eric Gill, whose work I had admired for many years.

A short time after leaving the Fitzwilliam, wandering around the streets of Cambridge before catching the train back to London, I stumbled across Kindersley’s workshop on Chesterton Road.  It seemed fateful somehow.  I was standing outside when a strikingly attractive woman came out of the studio to ask if she could help me.  I mumbled something about Eric Gill, buying the postcards, and finding the workshop when she invited me inside.  There, on the ground floor, was all the apparatus of the letter cutter’s craft: tools, preparatory drawings, unfinished work in stone, slate, and glass.  I remarked, as the woman gave me a quick tour of the workshop, about how the work reminded me of Gill.   “Hardly surprising.  David was one of Eric Gill’s apprentices”, said the woman.  It felt like I was touching history.

The woman (Lidia, David’s wife and a very accomplished letter-cutter in her own right) invited me to meet David who lived in the apartment above the workshop.  He was by this time 80 years old, a little frail physically but full of life and conversation.  I remember an enchanted afternoon and extraordinary hospitality.  Reminiscences of Eric Gill, samples of work from David’s apprenticeship, and homemade soup – often interrupted by David’s very young and very noisy sons.  I thought about those boys a few weeks later when I read the obituary for David in The Times.  David’s alphabets, which Lidia gave me on a subsequent meeting, are now framed and hanging in my home.  They’re a constant reminder of a very special afternoon and an unforgettable encounter with a great craftsman.