‘The Archaic Torso of Apollo’, by Rainer Maria Rilke by Peter Foster (carved to a design by Ralph Beyer)

Purbeck Thornback stone

Ralph Beyer, who died in 2008, was a pupil of Eric Gill and an influential letter carver. In the early 1960s, his lettering for the new Coventry Cathedral broke with the formality of most inscriptional work of the time. In 2006, the Lettering Arts Trust approached him about contributing to the Art & Memory Collection. Ralph told us he had designed an extract from a poem by the German poet Rilke that he would like to see carved.

“Ralph had read Rilke’s poems all his life and thought it would be very good if Peter Foster could carve this for him. Peter had worked with Ralph for at least 40 years and it was very pleasing to Ralph that this collaboration could be maintained.”

Hilary Beyer, wife of Ralph Beyer