Lettering in Stone 5-day short course - 7-11 July 2025

Dates: 7-11 July 2025

Time: 10:00 - 17:00

Fee: £585

Level: Beginners / some experience (18+ years)

Tutor: Tom Young

Come prepared for an intensive letter carving experience. Learning to draw Roman letters is an important part of the process, so you spend the mornings drawing sans serif and serifed letter forms. The afternoons will be spent building your carving skills. You will also learn how to transfer your work to the stone and how to sharpen your chisels.

'What a fantastic week. Excellent course, excellent teacher, a fantastic opportunity to discover myself. I really appreciate how the course was scheduled, the thematic practice and theory part explained crystal clear by the teacher.' Catalin

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The ancient art of carving letters and symbols into stone is as old as writing itself and today this enduring art form continues to have many uses in both historic and contemporary contexts. At City & Guilds of London Art School, we do all our lettering by hand and the skills we teach can be applied to a variety of materials. This course offers an intensive week of tuition to introduce you to or improve your drawn and carved lettering in stone.

Understanding the construction of letters is an essential part of learning how to carve them successfully in stone. We spend the mornings drawing sans serif and serif letters based on Roman forms and then transfer these letters to stone in the afternoon for carving. Moving between the drawing and carving helps build your skills in tandem, clarifying how each process complements the other. Our experienced tutor will explain and demonstrate all the processes involved in carving letters and keep a close eye on your progress at every stage.

By the end of the week, you should have a finished panel of letters carved in stone and take away the skills you need to continue drawing and carving your own work.

This very special opportunity to spend a week learning the essentials of this historic art form at our unique institution only comes along once a year. Grasp it while you can!

What’s included: all teaching, and your tools, goggles and materials for the letter carving.

What isn’t included: your meals, and bring a 300 or 600 mm steel or plastic ruler, an automatic pencil 0.5 mm and/or 0.3 mm, with leads, and a large plastic set square. Please wear old clothes you don’t mind spoiling, or bring a pair of decorator’s overalls, and wear steel cap boots.

10% discount available for City & Guilds of London Art School students, alumni and staff. Contact summerschool@cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk to receive the discount code.

Please note: in accordance with Eventbrite's Terms of Service, Eventbrite's fees are non-refundable. Any refunds made for Summer School bookings will have Eventbrite's fees deducted, unless we cancel the course. For more information, please see our terms and conditions.

‘It was really inspiring, and made me want to buy a chisel, dummy, stone blank and get cracking!’ Roger

If you’d like to keep up to date with news about our Summer School courses, please add your details to our Summer School mailing list. If you have any queries, please email us at summerschool@cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk

Any queries? Take a look at our FAQs page and for further help, please contact us at summerschool@cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk

The Art School thanks The Grocers’ Charity for their generous support of this initiative.