Lookbook: What's Your Type?

An exhibition of alphabet prints by David Kindersley harks back to the pre-digital days of typographic design.
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David Kindersley
David Kindersley (1915-1995), an English typeface designer, stone-cutter and print-maker, began his career in 1934 as an apprentice letterer for Eric Rowton Gill, typographer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
David Kindersley
Some of Kindersley's alphabets show the influence of his stone-cutting craft. His carved plaques and inscriptions in stone and slate can be seen on many churches and public buildings in the United Kingdom.
David Kindersley
Seen collectively here, Kindersley's lithographs illustrate his love for the pictorial quality of type.
David Kindersley
For this series, he investigates the design possibilities of text, applying his flair for pattern and colour.
David Kindersley
Kindersley uses type to create rhythm, movement, line and shape.
David Kindersley
The lithographs were produced at the Cardozo Kindersley workshop in Cambridge, which he established with his wife Lida Cardozo in 1946.
David Kindersley
Each alphabet type has its own personality, from geometric cuneiform to the curlicues of more formal text.
David Kindersley
Each print is signed by Kindersley and stamped with the Cardozo Kindersley insignia.
David Kindersley
Some of Kindersley's letters casually trip off the page as they compress space and flow into each other.
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We turn our attention to typography from the pre-digital age with this gallery of images from “What’s Your Type? An Exhibition of David Kindersley Alphabets” currently on show at Chandler House in Cape Town.

The 16 alphabets, created and printed by British 20th-century typographer David Kindersley, were acquired by the late South African painter Jean Welz on a visit to his Cambridge studio in the 1970s.

Kindersley is best known as the co-creator with Will Carter of the Octavian font for Monotype, and for his design of the striking metal gates of the British Library together with his wife Lida Lopes Cardozo.

The exhibition of his lithographs is the debut feature of the re-imagined Chandler House shop, which has converted its “voorkamer” (front room) into a gallery. Get there before Thursday 7 August, when the next exhibition – Niklas Wittenberg's intimate paintings of Table Mountain - opens. And look through our gallery of images above for a taster.