John Benson (artisan)

John Everett Benson (October 8, 1939 – June 13, 2024), known as Fud, was an American calligrapher, stonecarver, typeface designer and sculptor who created inscriptions for monuments including the John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, the National Gallery of Art, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.

Life and work
John Everett Benson was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1939. His mother, Esther Fisher Smith Benson, spoke using the archaic pronouns of Quaker "plain speech." Benson began working for his father, John Howard Benson, at the age of fifteen at The John Stevens Shop, which his father had purchased. He studied sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. In 1964, Benson and John Hegnauer were commissioned to design and carve the inscriptions on the John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. In Rhode Island, Benson carved a number of inscriptions at the University of Rhode Island's Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons.



He designed and carved gravestones for Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, and George Balanchine.

Benson created monumental architectural inscriptions for famous buildings such as the Prudential Center in Boston, the National Gallery of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, Rockefeller Center, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Center, and the Armand Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles. He lettered the date stones of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, and the Federal Courthouse in Boston. He designed the National Geographic Society headquarters lintel, West Point's MacArthur Monument, and the reverse of a medal for the National Gallery of Art.

He drew various photo-typefaces for architectural applications and a titling typeface, called Aardvark, for The Font Bureau in Boston, Alexa, Balzano, and Caliban.

In 1993, he left the direction of The John Stevens Shop to his son, Nicholas "Nick" Benson and returned to sculpting full-time.

Latterly Benson was doing portrait and figurative work in clay and bronze at his studio in Newport, Rhode Island. He died in Newport on June 13, 2024, at the age of 85.

Awards

 * Frederic W. Goudy Award, 2019