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Into the Central Lettering Record

Black and white photograph of a shop sign with an elongated letter style, reading, ‘Gioie e Regali, Milano’.
Black and white photograph of a shop sign with an elongated letter style, reading, ‘Gioie e Regali, Milano’.
Gioie e Regali, photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.1127.M
Written by
Lucy Catherine Parker Published date
15 July 2025

The Central Lettering Record is an incredible, multifaceted resource at Central Saint Martins, gathered over many years.

It started as a teaching collection at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. It was built considerably by Nicolete Gray and Nicholas Biddulph in the 1960s and is now part of the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection, and curated by Catharine Dixon in the CSM Design School.

Over the years, teachers and researchers at the college added to the collection. It contains lettering in many formats, with a focus on 'vernacular' hand crafted examples in public space.

A collection of photographs of lettering taken by typographer, Alan Bartram (1932-2013), which had been donated to the Central Lettering Record, was catalogued by Elena Veguillas for the CSM Museum in 2024. The Archives and Special Collections Centre and the CSM Museum collaborated to digitized them. I have now been working to preserve the digital images and make them available to view on the UAL Digital Collections Platform.

You can view some highlights from it in a new curated collection: Lettering: extraordinary, everyday and ephemeral.

Black and white photograph of a road sign reading, Fitzwilliam Street, the photograph is cropped and mounted on a white background with notes in pencil around it.
Lettering shown on a narrow metal street name sign mounted on a brick wall, reading ‘FITZWILLIAM STREET’, photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.321.M

The Alan Bartram Collection

Alan Bartram began a personal photographic survey of vernacular lettering types across the UK and areas of Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.

Bartram, originally trained in painting. But his brother Harold Bartram, a teacher at the London School of Printing (now the London College of Communication), introduced him to typography. Harold, in turn, had learned from Anthony Froshaug and Herbert Spencer at the Central School of Art and Design in London.

As a typographer and lettering expert, he worked at Lund Humphries (a publisher of Art, Architecture and Design books) from about 1967, after working with the famous typographer, Herbert Spencer, for Typographia Magazine.

Alan produced a whole series of books on lettering practices between 1975 and 1986, published by Lund Humphries. A number can be found in UAL libraries, including Lettering in Architecture, Fascia Lettering, Street Name Lettering, Tombstone Lettering in the British Isles and The English Lettering Tradition.

These books used his photographic collection to illustrate different lettering styles. You can tell by the way some of the physical photographs have been cropped, that this happened during the process of book production and layout.

  • Black and white photograph of a shop sign where the lettering is peeling, showing different layers of lettering underneath. Two passers by are caught in the shot, walking in front of the building.
    ‘Ghost Sign’, Showing different layers of lettering through time. Location: Segovia, Spain, photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.1097.M.1-2
  • Black and white photograph of a section of a shopsign, with the letters ‘H.A.N.’
    Section of lettering on a pub, capital serif (wedge) low contrast letterforms with horizontal bars replaced by diamonds, reading, ‘Han’. Another image in the collection shows the whole sign reading, ‘HOULIHAN VICTUALLER’. Location: Killorglin, Ireland. Photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.817.M.1-2
  • Black and white photograph of a sign in a shop or café window, reading, ‘The Picnic Basket’
    Lettering on a board in a shop or café window, with a three-dimensional effect, reading ’THE PICNIC BASKET’. Location: Ulverston, North West England. The photograph shows the reflection of the photographer. Photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.686.M
  • Black and white photograph of rounded stones that might be tombstones, with lettering in Latin carved into them. They are broken and look quite old
    Ancient Roman lettering carved on stones in Latin. Location: Museo delle Terme, Rome, Italy, photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.980.M.1-4

Using the collection

We hope that digitising, and making the collection accessible online allows students to undertake new kinds of visual research with it. We can make new connections between objects, locations, contexts, practices, shapes, forms and materials.

It will also help us to open connections between collections held at different sites across UAL, so that students can make better use of the resources available to them.

Black and white photograph of a shop front with a sign reading, 'CONFECCIONES'. An old man in a flat cap and with a walking stick is walking in front of the shop. A couple is walking in the other direction in the foreground of the photograph
Lettering shown on commercial premises (dress maker and shop) on the fascia board, handpainted capital slab serif (unbracketed) low contrast letterforms with a shadow effect, reading ’CONFECCIONES’.

The objects as photographs

In processing these materials, I also found myself reflecting on them as photography, thinking about Bartram’s intentions, to collect and clearly depict lettering in public spaces.

But the photographs themselves also document the occasionally unintended: aspects of everyday life seep into the photographs and convey something about context, mood and the moment, captured.

In others, the black and white photography helps to highlight texture, light and shade, creating images with a ‘grain’ to them, characteristic of the analogue photographic process, that you do not get in the same way with digital images.

The selection of images is also telling. They reflect one particular man’s travels in the UK and Europe in the 1970s. Our choice to select them was to test out what might be possible with digitisation. But it raises questions about the gaps in the survey, what is not included. What would you choose to document, if you could?

Black and white photograph of a wooden cart, with details about the business owner carved into the side in an ornate script as if handwritten.
Carved on a wooden cart. Location: London. photograph by Alan Bartram, from the Central Lettering Record, Object Ref: CLR.2023.754.M.1-7

Find out more

Explore items from the Central Lettering Record on the UAL Digital Collections Platform.

By clicking on individual objects and following to 'more information’, you can discover where the item sits in the museum catalogue.

You can find out how to book an appointment to see the physical Alan Bartram collection at Central Saint Martins.

For any questions about Archives and Special Collections or our digital projects, please email archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk