Camilla reveals new cypher co-designed by former Benedictine monk

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The Queen Consort’s new cypher has been created – with the help of a former Benedictine monk.

Camilla‘s monogram will feature on her personal letterheads, cards and gifts and appears more ornate than the King’s cypher, which is being used on government buildings, state documents and new post boxes.

Selected from a series of designs, the cypher is the Queen Consort’s personal property and is expected to be seen for the first time in public on Thursday when featured on the cross she will lay at Westminster Abbey’s Field of Remembrance.

Ewan Clayton, professor of design at the University of Sunderland, helped create the design in collaboration with the artist behind Charles’ monogram, Tim Noad, who is heraldic artist and calligrapher at the College of Arms in London.

The Queen Consort’s cypher features the initials “CR” below a representation of the Crown, incorporating C for Camilla intertwined with R for Regina - Latin for Queen.

Professor Clayton, who trained as a calligrapher, lived as a Benedictine monk at Worth Abbey in Sussex in the mid-1980s and was later hired as a consultant to work at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Laboratory, in California’s Silicon Valley, which helped develop Ethernet and the laser printer.

The academic is a core member of staff at the Royal Drawing School, which Charles helped establish, and is a visiting lecturer in calligraphy at a number of academic institutions.