John Neilson

I’ve been a lettercarver and lettering designer since 1992, originally training as a calligrapher at Roehampton Institute. Tom Perkins taught me how to carve letters.


My stone work covers the usual range from small things to large public art and architectural lettering, via memorials (of which I have made around 200 to date), plaques and uncommissioned pieces. I also do a certain amount of typographic design, and have been editor of the Letter Exchange journal Forum since 2003. I was a lettering advisor to the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham, from 2004 to 2023. I organise a week-long course at least once a year in Wales (jneilson.co.uk), and have taught workshops throughout the UK and in Japan, Scandinavia, Lebanon, the USA and elsewhere. My book The Inscriptions of Ralph Beyer was published in 2021.


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