Table of Contents
History of Calligraphy
2
Basic Strokes
6
Vertical Roman
7
Italic Cursive
8
Gothic or Black Letter
9
Uncial
10
Practice Paper
11
Works Cited/ About the Authors 17
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History of Calligraphy
he art of calligraphy as we know it today actually finds its origins in cave paintings. Back in the days when communication was a series of grunts, the written word was a mere pictorial representation of significant events in a caveman’s life. As humans developed, the art of draw-ing pictures became quite highlydeveloped and reached great heights under the direction of the Egyptians. About 3500 BC, the Egyptians cre-ated the highly stylized hieroglyph-ics for which they are so well known. These symbols were incised inside tombs or painted with brushes across papyrus paper. A few thou-sand years later, around 1000 BC, the Phoenicians went a step further and developed what is believed to be one of the first alphabets and writing systems. Luckily the Phoenicians were sea faring types and they read-ily passed along their new talents to every seaport through which they passed. They most likely influenced the Greeks who later developed their own form of writing, which by 850 BC the Romans had adapted to suit the Latin language.
It just so happens that Latin was the lingua franca of the churches of Europe in the Middle Ages and the monks (and a smattering of nobility) constituted the only literate members of society. Since nothing could be more glorious than the word of God, the monks began to carefully scribe ancient texts into decora-tive books used by high-ranking church members and royalty. Paper was expensive during the Middle Ages, so scribing monks developed a writing style that was narrower allowing more words to fit on a single line. This style came to be known as Gothic and lasted as a popular scribing technique throughout much of the Middle Ages.
By the mid 15th century, however, Johannes
Gutenberg had invented the printing press based upon the Gothic lettering of the monks. This new technique allowed for faster printing of Bibles and threatened the métier of the monks. Although the use of the printing press spread worldwide, handwriting skills were still in high demand. The bulky printing press was too coarse
for everyday letters, formal correspondence and invita-tions. As the arts flourish during Europe’s Renaissance, so too did the art of calligraphy. Italians during this time invented the italic script, which became popular throughout most of Europe. But calligraphers were threatened once again with the advent of engraved copperplates in the 17th century, which permitted the printing of finer lines more attuned to italic script. One
hundred years later, artistic penman-ship was in a steep decline.
To further complicate matters for artistic scribes, by the 19th cen-tury the steel pen and fountain pen replaced the flat-edged pen. The rounded tip of these new pens made the special curves of calligraphy more difficult to achieve. The art itself might have seen its extinction if it weren’t for the British poet and artist William Morris. In the mid-19th century William Morris spearheaded a calligraphic revival, reintroducing the flat edged pen and elevating the act of writing to the art form of its past.
It might appear that the art of cal-ligraphy couldn’t possibly withstand the competition from the 20th cen-tury’s most important invention – the computer. With a click of the mouse, a list of various scripts are generated electronically and lasered onto bleached paper in an instant – the art of script preserved in an electronic pulse. But calligraphy is flourishing more than ever with calligraphic societies throughout the United States and Europe. According to noted calligrapher, Julian Waters during a lecture at Washington’s Sidwell Friends School in 1997, true cal-ligraphy is the art of producing letters that capture the spirit of the text they represent. For many artists, much mental pre-planning is necessary to fully understand the text before deciding how to display it in its full beauty. This type of emotion can not always be gener-ated from a computer, which for Julian Waters is ‘simply another tool’ to be manipulated by the artist.
Calligraphy is a popular art form whose boundar-ies are not restricted to Europe and the United States. Around 1500 BC the Chinese developed a complicated writing technique using more than 1500 characters. Today the Chinese consider calligraphy to be one of their most respected art forms. Master Chinese
An example of Egyptian calligraphy,
known as Hieroglyphics
calligraphers may appear to be spontaneously stroking a brush over the paper, but many meditate extensively before designing. The Arabs are also noted for their history of calligraphy. Their cursive is written from right to left and formed by eighteen distinct shapes, the various combinations of which produce twenty-eight letters. Arabic script appears highly distinctive from the lettering used throughout most of
Europe, but Arabic calligraphy has had many of the same Greek and Phoenician influences. In Arabic calligraphy there are six major scripts (Farsi, Naskh, Kufi, Deewani, Req’aa, and Thuluth) representing various artistic styles.
For true calligraphers, the art of penmanship will always be alive as long as there is at least one artist willing to carry on the tradition. Despite super fast computers that can produce a myriad of different fonts, real calligraphy comes from deep within the artist who strives to
evoke the true emotion of the script through the words they draw. Calligraphy has survived throughout history despite printing presses and copperplate engravings, and dedicated followers of the art expect it to outlast the next big invention of the 21st century.
This passage was taken from: http://www.essortment.com/all/ calligraphyhist_reyt.htm
Development of Western Style Calligraphy
Western calligraphy is the calligraphy of the Latin writing system, and to a lesser degree the Greek and Cyrillic writing systems.[ Early alphabets had evolved by about 3000 BC. From the Etruscan alphabet evolved the Latin alphabet. Capital letters (majuscules)emerged first, followed by the invention of lower case letters (minuscules) in the Carolingian period. The his-tory of lettering records many excursions into historical obscurity and disuse as well as elaborating the story of what gave rise to contemporary print.
Long, heavy rolls of papyrus were replaced by the Romans with the first books, initially simply folded pages of parchment made from animal skins. Reed pens were replaced by quill pens.
Christian churches promoted the development of writing through the prolific copying of the Bible, particularly the New Testament and other sacred texts. [11] Two distinct styles of writing known as uncial and
half-uncial (from the Latin “uncia,” or “inch”) devel-oped from a variety of Roman book hands. The 7th-9th centuries in northern Europe were the heyday of Celtic illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Durrow, Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells.
Charlemagne’s devotion to improved scholarship resulted in the recruiting of “a crowd of scribes”,
ac-cording to Alcuin, the Abbot of York. Alcuin developed the style known as the Caroline or Carolingian minuscule. The first manuscript in this hand was the Godescalc Evangelistary (finished 783) — a Gospel book written by the scribe Godescalc. Carolingian remains the one progenitor hand from which modern book type descends. Blackletter (also known as Gothic) and its variation Rotunda, gradu-ally developed from the Carolingian hand during the 12th century. Over the next three centuries, the scribes in northern Europe used an ever more compressed and spiky form of Gothic. Those in Italy and Spain preferred the rounder but still heavy-looking Rotunda. During the 15th century, Italian scribes returned to the Roman and Carolingian models of writing and designed the Italic hand, also called Chancery cursive, and Roman book hand. These three hands — Gothic, Italic, and Roman book hand — became the models for printed letters. Johannes Gutenberg used Gothic to print his famous Bible, but the lighter-weight Italic and Roman book hand have since become the standard.
During the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts were produced: some illuminated with gold and fine painting, some illustrated with line draw-ings, and some just textbooks.
Development of Western Style Calligraphy
Western calligraphy is the calligraphy of the Latin writing system, and to a lesser degree the Greek and Cyrillic writing systems. Early alphabets had evolved by about 3000 BC. From the Etruscan alphabet evolved the Latin alphabet. Capital letters (majuscules) emerged first, followed by the invention of lower case letters (minuscules) in the Carolingian period. The history of lettering records many excursions into historical obscu-rity and disuse as well as elaborating the story of what gave rise to contemporary print.The Phoenician alphabet. This alphabet
was spread throughout the Mediterranean
Long, heavy rolls of papyrus were replaced by the Romans with the first books, initially simply folded pages of parchment made from animal skins. Reed pens were replaced by quill pens.
Christian churches promoted the development of writing through the prolific copying of the Bible, par-ticularly the New Testament and other sacred texts. Two distinct styles of writing known as uncial and half-un-cial (from the Latin “uncia,” or “inch”) developed from a variety of Roman book hands. The 7th-9th centuries in northern Europe were the heyday of Celtic illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Durrow, Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells.
Charlemagne’s devotion to improved scholarship resulted in the recruiting of
“a crowd of scribes”, accord-ing to Alcuin, the Abbot of York. Alcuin developed the style known as the Caroline or Carolingian minuscule. The first manuscript in this hand was the Godescalc Evangelistary (finished 783) — a Gospel book written by the scribe Godescalc. Carolingian remains the
one progenitor hand from which modern book type descends. Blackletter(also known as Gothic) and its variation Rotunda, gradually developed from the Carolingian hand during the 12th century. Over the next three centuries, the scribes in northern Europe used an ever more compressed and spiky form of Gothic. Those in Italy and Spain preferred the rounder but still heavy-looking Rotunda. During the 15th century, Italian scribes returned to the Roman and Carolingian models of writing and designed the Italic hand, also called Chancery cursive, and Roman book hand. These three hands — Gothic, Italic, and Roman book hand — became the models for printed letters. Johannes Gutenberg used Gothic to print his famous Bible, but the lighter-weight Italic and Roman book hand have since become the standard.
During the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts were produced: some illuminated with gold and fine painting, some illustrated with line draw-ings, and some just textbooks.
Resurgence of Western Calligraphy
The rise of printing from movable type in the mid-15th century did not mean the end of calligraphy. Illuminated manuscripts declined, however, after print-ing became ubiquitous. Conventionally the histories
of Copperplate hands have represented such writing to have been with a sharp pointed nib instead of the broad-edged one used in most calligraphic writing. This so called “Copperplate Myth” represents the name to come from the sharp lines of the writing style resem-bling the etches of engraved copper printing plates. It is unlikely that this picture represents the historical ori-gins of the term accurately, but is rather more reflective of later 19th and 20th century antipecuniary comfort of the Arts and Crafts movement participants. It is most likely that what is today written with pointed steel nibs began stylistic life before the 1820s with a broad edged quill and a number of period pen hold, posture and arm position variations to facilitate the fine lines. Hence
there was likely a gradual change in historic writing practices and a reorientation of the vocation and place of writing rather than the elimi-nation of the art.
At the end of the 19th century, the aesthetics and philosophy of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement appealed to many calligraphers, including Englishmen Edward Johnston and Eric Gill. Johnston was introduced to 10th-century manuscripts, at the Fitzherbert Museum by Sir Sidney Cockerell and based his own calligraphy on them. Johnston and his students were to redefine, revive and popularize English broad-pen calligraphy.
The legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement includes considerable myth. Published in 1906, Johnston’s best known work Writing, Illuminating & Lettering never used the terms “Foundational” or “Foundational Hand” for which he is most remembered. Johnston initially taught his students an uncial hand using a flat pen angle, but later taught his “foundational hand” using a slanted pen angle. He first referred to this hand as “Foundational Hand” in Plate 6 of his 1909 publica-tion, Manuscript & Inscription Letters for Schools and Classes and for the Use of Craftsmen. The Johnston Typeface (commissioned in 1916) became the basis for the London Underground signage and continues today in the New Johnston typeface, revised in 1988.
At about the same time as Johnston, Austrian Rudolf Larisch was teaching lettering at the Vienna School of Art and published six lettering books that greatly influenced German-speaking calligraphers. Because German-speaking countries had not abandoned the
An example of traditional western style
calligraphy with hint of Gothic style.
Gothic hand in printing, Gothic also had a powerful effect on their styles. Rudolf Koch was a friend and younger contemporary of Larisch. Koch’s books, type designs, and teaching made him one of the most in-fluential calligraphers of the 20th century in northern Europe and later in the U.S. Larisch and Koch taught and inspired many European
calligraphers, notably Friedrich Neugebauer, Karlgeorg Hoefer, and Hermann Zapf.
Graily Hewitt was most re-sponsible for the revival of the art of gilding, both by contribut-ing to Writcontribut-ing, Illuminatcontribut-ing and Lettering (Chapter 9 Appendix) and through his own publica-tions, most notably Lettering for Students & Craftsmen (1930). Hewitt is not without both critics and supporters in his rendering of Cennino Cennini’s medieval gesso recipes. Donald Jackson, a British calligrapher,
has sourced his gesso recipes from earlier centuries a number of which are not presently in English transla-tion. Graily Hewitt created the patent announcing the award to Prince Philip of the title of Duke of Edinburgh on November 19 1947, the day before his marriage to Queen Elizabeth.
Many typefaces are based on historical hands, such as Blackletter (including Fraktur), Lombardic, Uncial, Italic, and Round hand.
Calligraphy Today
Calligraphy today finds diverse applications. These include graphic design, logo design, type design, paint-ings, scholarship, maps, menus, greeting cards, invita-tions, legal documents, diplomas, cut stone inscrip-tions, memorial documents, props and moving images for film and television, business cards, and handmade presentations. Many calligraphers make their liveli-hood in the addressing of envelopes and invitations for public and private events including wedding statio-nery. Entry points exist for both children and adults via classes and instruction books.
The scope of the calligraphic art is more than pure antiquarian interest. Johnston’s legacy remains pivotal to the ambitions of perhaps most Western calligraphers:
“It is possible even now to go back to the child’s - something like the early calligrapher’s - point of view, and this is the only healthy one for any fine beginning:
to this nothing can be added; all Rules must give way to Truth and Freedom.”
The multi-million dollar Saint John’s Bible project for the 21st century has engaged Donald Jackson with an international scriptorium and is nearing comple-tion. It is designed as a 21st century illuminated Bible,
executed with both ancient and modern tools and techniques. The earlier 20th-century “Bulley Bible” was executed by a student of Edward Johnston’s, Edward Bulley.
The digital era has facilitated the creation and dissemination of thousands of new and histori-cally styled fonts. Calligraphy gives unique expression to every individual letter form within a design layout which is not the strength of typeface technolo-gies no matter their sophistica-tion. The usefulness of the digi-tal medium to the calligrapher is not limited to the computer layout of the new Saint John’s Bible prior to working by hand. Writing directly in the digital medium is facilitated via graphics tablets (e.g. Wacom and Toshiba) and is expected to grow in use with the introduction of Microsoft Windows Vista operating system (“Vista Pen Flicks”) in 2007. Apple Inc. introduced a similar “shorthand” facility in their Tiger operating system in 2005. Graphics tablets facilitate calligraphic design work more than large size art pieces. The internet supports a number of online communities of calligraphers and hand lettering artists.
[Excerpt taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Western_calligraphy]
Calligraphy in a Latin Bible of AD 1407 on
display in Malmesbury Abbey,
Wiltshire, England.
Calligraphy of the German word “Urkunde” which
trans-lates to “deed.”
Basic Strokes
Probably the first thing you would do as a beginner calligrapher is practice the
basic elements of letters — vertical and horizontal stems, round strokes, slanted
stems. Here are some letter elements for the Roman hand:
More Tips
1. Intentionally make time to practice. I've found that if you actually schedule
practice time, it becomes a part of your routine. It is the routine that will help
make you a better calligrapher.
2. Consistently practice your craft. Setting a schedule to practice once per month
will not help you learn how to write calligraphy. Consistent, scheduled practice
makes for beautiful works of this amazing art. Let's say at least once per week.
3. Share your practice works with others. Sharing what you create is a powerful way
to gain momentum in the learning process. Praise and constructive criticism is
always helpful for the mind and the spirit.
Now try your hand at performing basic strokes using the lins below (Note that none of
these basic strokes will be used as ascenders or descenders yet).
Vertical Roman
Vertical is the most common type of calligraphy. It’s shape is created from a
rectangle with serifs on the ends of the letters. A serif is a small line on the
beginning of a stroke and the end of a stroke.
Italic or Cursive
This font is slanted rather then straight, it is also flowing and free. Be sure to ease
up on your grip when using this font.
Gothic or Black Letter
A more formal font but it is difficult to read. It is one of the first fonts of calligraphy
ever used. It is also the most recognized of all fonts.
Uncial
Uncial is a combination of upper case letters and lower case letters. It shows
stregnth and intensity with elegnce.
Works Cited
History of Calligraphy- http://www.essortment.com/all/calligraphyhist_reyt.htm Calligraphy- http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/calligraphy.html
Phoenician Alphabet- http://www.phoenician.org/alphabet_phoenician.GIF Western Calligraphy- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_calligraphy How to Write Calligraphy- http://www.squidoo.com/howtowritecalligraphy
Inkscape Tutorial: Calligraphy- http://www.inkscape.org/doc/calligraphy/tutorial-calligraphy.html
About the Authors
Ben Clarke
Ben Clarke is a student at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona. He enjoys spending his time hanging out with his friends, watching TV, and playing video games. For this book, he set the type, did research on the history of calligraphy, and formatted the book.
Moriah Sanford
Moriah Sanford is a junior at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona. She enjoys her spare time playing video games, hanging out with friends, and playing with her ferrets. For this book she did all the calligraphy and created the background and covers.
