Eric Kindel is Professor of Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. For twenty-five years he has been investigating the use of stencils for lettering, text composition, and other graphic mark-making. The research, some of it done with expert collaborators, has resulted in published studies, exhibitions, reconstructed stencilling equipment, and a working collection of historical artefacts and documents. His aim has been to establish a reliable account of stencil work across time, place, and context, bringing together individual episodes to eventually construct a synoptic history – or at least the framework of one.