Queen Consort’s cypher created by former monk
THE Queen Consort’s new cypher features her initials intertwined below a Tudor crown and was designed by a former Benedictine monk.
The monogram was selected from a series of designs and will be used on personal letterheads, cards and gifts. It will be seen in public for the first time on Thursday, when it features on a cross that the Queen Consort will lay at Westminster Abbey’s Field of Remembrance.
It is more ornate than the design chosen by the King, which will be used on government buildings, state documents and new postboxes. Both include their initials, CR, for Camilla Regina and Charles Rex respectively, below a representation of the same crown.
The Queen Consort’s former cypher featured a simple C below the crown.
The new monogram, which is her personal property, was co-created by Ewan Clayton, professor of design at the University of Sunderland, and Timothy Noad, the artist behind the King’s monogram. Prof Clayton, who trained as a calligrapher, lived as a Benedictine monk at Worth Abbey in Sussex for four years in the mid-1980s. The academic is a core member of staff at the Royal Drawing School, co-founded by the King, and is a visiting lecturer in calligraphy at several academic institutions.
Prof Clayton traces his passion for calligraphy back to his childhood in Ditchling, East Sussex, which was also home to Edward Johnston, the man widely deemed to be the father of modern calligraphy. He has said: “When I was 12 years old my handwriting was so bad I was moved back to junior school to learn how to write all over again.
“I was given Johnston’s biography and started to realise just how interesting a subject handwriting was.”
While broadly following the same pattern, successive monarchs and their consorts have each taken their own approach to choosing a cypher.
A stylised version of the St Edward’s Crown was chosen by George II, George III, George IV and later, by Queen Elizabeth II.