Half a century on, it is hard to remember the controversy provoked by Basil Spence's winning design for the commission to rebuild Coventry Cathedral. His “neon Gothic” building, as the architectural critic Rayner Banham described it, satisfied neither modernists, new liturgists nor the dying breed of Gothic Revivalists.

In retrospect, Spence judged the moment to perfection, producing a work of undoubted and enduring quality into which, as Kenneth Clark said, “he brought together for a moment in history the best skills and talents in our country”.

The array of talent assembled and orchestrated by Spence to embellish the new cathedral was, arguably, no less controversial than his concept. It included two grand old men of the arts, the painter Graham Sutherland and the sculptor Jacob Epstein; experimental artists such as the glass engraver John Hutton and the painter John Piper, as well as the furniture designer Dick Russell; and a galaxy of exciting younger artists including the glassmakers Margaret Traherne and Patrick Reyntiens, the sculptor Elizabeth Frink, the ceramicist Hans Coper and the young German sculptor and lettering artist Ralph Beyer.

Beyer's commission was the most controversial - and it was also perhaps unique in the history of 20th-century architecture. He carved the vast Tablets of the Words, eight sandstone panels incised with quotations and simple symbols, mounted on the angled walls flanking the nave; he chased enormous cut brass letters into the black marble floor; and he developed his “felt”, freehand letterform into an alphabet to provide a distinctive typographic style for use throughout the cathedral and for its presentation in print, including a set of numerals for the hymn numbers. In effect, he was asked to create a corporate image for the cathedral.

Ralph Alexander Beyer was born in Berlin in 1921. He was the son of the art historian Oscar Beyer, whose writings included a seminal work on the Early Christian inscriptions in the catacombs of Rome; articles on the Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn; and a monograph on the typographer and lettering artist Rudolf Koch. Oscar's academic interests, and his friendship with both Mendelsohn and Koch, were to have a profound and lasting influence on Ralph Beyer's life and work.

Beyer's childhood was anything but orthodox. In the 1920s the family lived on an island in a lake near Potsdam. They moved to Dresden in 1928; then, with the rise of National Socialism, they emigrated. Ralph's Jewish mother, Margarete (née Lowenfeld) was to perish at Auschwitz after deciding to return.

In 1937, aged 16, Beyer visited England where, on the recommendation of Mendelsohn, he spent six months as an apprentice to Eric Gill. Like Gill, and doubtless enthused by him, Beyer was fascinated by the qualities of carved stone, by simple sculptural forms and especially by letterform. Ralph then studied in London, at the Central School of Arts & Crafts and at Chelsea School of Art where he met Henry Moore, for whom he worked briefly before being interned as an enemy alien at the outbreak of the war.

Fellow inmates at the camp at Huyton, Liverpool, included the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, then working on his classic work An Outline of European Architecture. Beyer became Pevsner's sounding board, reading and discussing each chapter as it was drafted in the author's illegible, minuscule hand. As a result of this shared enterprise, and their common interest in modernism, the two became lasting friends.

Towards the end of the war Beyer worked with the Pioneer Corps, felling trees in northwest France, and later as a translator for the Intelligence

Corps in Germany, where he met his father again and learnt of his mother's death.

Returning to England, Beyer worked for, among others, the Cambridge masons Ratty & Kett and for David Kindersley. Having married young, and with a growing family to support, he took any jobbing work available.

In 1954 he started the first of a series of collaborative ventures with the architect Murray & Maguire that continued until 1986: from the carved stone altar of the foundation of St Katherine in the East End of London, to applied fibrous plaster letters in the KITA day centre for children in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

Encouraged by Henry Moore, Spence decided that, the Sutherland tapestry apart, the dominant decorative feature of the interior of the new Coventry Cathedral should be lettering rather than narrative sculpture. He knew he was looking not simply for a craftsman but for an artist capable of making a truly distinctive contribution. It was Pevsner who suggested that Spence should meet Beyer, to learn how he might approach a project which was to become the defining challenge of his life.

The Coventry commission was followed by another big project at the Paul Tillich Park, New Harmony, Indiana, in memory of the German theologian. To meet his deadline Beyer experimented, not entirely successfully, with sand-blasting letters into granite boulders. He also carved by hand a memorial stone to Tillich; and later created a series of inscriptions in a roofless church designed by another distinguished architect, Philip Johnson.

This was a good time for Beyer. He had regular and varied commissions to produce memorials and other plaques, and he began to teach: first at Sidcup Art School, later at the enlarged Ravensbourne College of Art. For nearly 20 years he taught in the typography department run by the designer Michael Twyman at the University of Reading.

More recently he taught on the pioneering letter-cutting course started by Berthold Wolpe in the early 1970s at the City & Guilds of London School of Art. These were rewarding years for Beyer and his students, many of whom were to become friends.

Beyer changed architectural lettering in Britain from the craft tradition of Gill and his disciples into an art form. He took the naive simplicity of those early Christian inscriptions, the lettering and symbols that so intrigued his father, and transformed them into something that seemed informal but was instinctively controlled. He had been aware of the painter, printmaker and illustrator David Jones's early experiments with freehand lettering, but as a letter carver Beyer took a very different approach.

He was meticulous both about the delineation of each letter, never reproducing exactly the same shape, but also by the surrounding space. Everything about Beyer's work, the outline letterform, the texture of the chisel marks on the stone and his use of light and colour is so carefully considered that it seems effortlessly and perfectly balanced.

Spence had been immediately struck by Beyer's modesty, and so was everyone who met him. He was unfailingly interested in, and generous about, the work of other artists and designers. He was gentle and humorous, and enjoyed nothing more than good conversation, especially to the accompaniment of good food and wine.

Beyer was married twice: first to Ann, by whom he had a son and three daughters; and, just before the Coventry commission, to Hilary, by whom he had two daughters.

Ralph Beyer, sculptor and lettering artist, was born on April 6, 1921. He died on February 13, 2008, aged 86