Review: Calligraphy Alphabets Made Easy, by Margaret Shepherd Sunday, Oct 19 2008

This is not a straightforward review–I am reviewing this book strictly in terms of its usefulness as a reference for historical calligraphers. It’s set up for you to work through with an alphabet every day and a project a week, but I’m ignoring that and looking at it solely as an alphabet modelbook.

Calligraphy Alphabets Made Easy
Margaret Shepherd
Penguin, 1986, 112 pp.

This book provides little specific instruction for the individual alphabets, so I would not recommend it for a beginner. Of the 365 alphabets, most are modern or whimsical, but some are historical, historically based, or suitable as faux or pseudoscripts for SCA purposes (faux Chinese, faux Arabic, etc.).

Roman – A straightforward Roman capital hand.
Celtic Any Case – Based on Uncial, but not very historical; I wouldn’t use it.
Namor – Roman mirror writing.
Lower Kingdom – A nice faux Chinese script.
Coiltic – “A fanciful modern invented style, based on 8th-century coiled Celtic.” I don’t know enough about Celtic to comment on this, but it might be a good starting point.
Swash Capitals – Simple swash capitals suitable for use with Italic hands.
Split Swash – Wouldn’t be out of place for the Renaissance.
Basic Gothic – A fairly generic Gothic hand; not glaringly modern, but there are better ones.
Super Celtic – Stretched letters for filling the ends of lines. “Many of these letters come from the Book of Kells.”
Vivaldi – Decorative Italic-based capitals; not historical but would work as capitals with an historical Italic hand.
Swash Italic – A simple swash hand, not extremely historical but a good starting point.
Backward Italic – A back-slanting Italic hand “based on a 16th-century Italian style by Tagliente.”
Turned Celtic – A more historical Uncial-inspired hand.
Arched Italic – Looks a bit like a cross between Batarde and Italic; not historical to my knowledge but looks like something Renaissance calligraphers might have played with.
Caroling – VERY loosely based on Caroline Minuscule; please don’t use this.
Lag B’omer – A faux Hebew script
Jerusalem – A more obviously English faux Hebrew script.
Fraktur – A 16th century German Gothic hand.
Fraktur Capitals – For use with Fraktur.
Concave Gothic and Concave Scroll – A generic modern Gothic hand.
Half-Round Gothic – Somewhat similar to Early Gothic.
Rustica – “A 5th-century rendition of a 1st-century Roman.”
Split Swash – A nice swash capital alphabet for a split pen.
Gothic Caps – Generic Gothic capitals.
Endless – Capital letters made up of continuous lines. Not historical, but would work as a substitute for simple cadels or Italic swash capitals.
Dürer Caps – “Copies of 15th-century German woodcuts.”
Antiquarr – “A 16th-century design by Ludovico Arrighi.” Lowercase, missing j, v, and w.
Magdalene – Capitals “adapted from a 15th-century copy book.”
Frills – “16th-century capitals by Arrighi.” Simple cadels, no j, u, or w.
Florentine – “16th-century Italian style” with decorative descenders.
Russian – A faux Cyrillic hand, but based on modern Russian–not very similar to historical Cyrillic hands.
Delhight – A faux Sanskrit hand.
Upper Kingdom – Another faux Chinese hand. Some of the letters are real Chinese characters or partial ones, so I would be careful using this.
Shivered – A very decorative Gothic hand–similar to some in 16th century modelbook Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta.
Twinings – A generic Gothic hand with a variety of suggested decorative ascenders, some period, some not. Use with care.
Benedictus – “14th-century letters” with decorative ascenders.
Versals – Simple initial letters.
Gothic Initials – A not very exciting set of generic Gothic capitals.
Embellished Gothic – “Some of these ornaments came from medieval manuscripts; others are modern inventions.” A nice hand.

Please note that these assessments are all mine, and I’m not extremely familiar with all the Gothic hands. Overall, however, I think this book has enough historical or near-historical hands to be useful for the SCA calligrapher, and Lower Kingdom and Upper Kingdom are the best faux Chinese scripts I’ve seen so far.

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A Basic Historical Calligraphy and Illumination Library Wednesday, May 14 2008

Calligraphy (from Greek κάλλος kallos “beauty” + γραφή graphẽ “writing”): The art of writing.

Illumination: Decorations for text, in the strictest definition, gold or silver. These may include decorated letters, margins, miniature paintings, etc.

These are the books I have found most useful for historical calligraphic hands, quill-cutting, information on leafing and historical materials, etc. I haven’t yet found a really good how-to for historical illumination–recommendations welcome.

Harris, David. The Art of Calligraphy: a practical guide to the skills and techniques. Dorling Kindersley: New York (1995), 128 pp.

Includes how to cut quill and reed pens, script timeline, script reference chart, historical background, and instructions for the following hands:

Rustic Capitals (Roman Rustic), Square Capitals, Imperial Capitals (Roman), Uncial, Artifical Uncial (Late Uncial), Insular Majuscule, Insular Minuscule, Caroline Minuscule (Carolingian), Foundational (a post-Renaissance), Early Gothic (Late Carolingian, Carolingian Gothic), Gothic Textura Quadrata, Gothic Textura Prescisus, Gothic Capitals and Versals, Lombardic Capitals, Bastard Secretary (Elizabethan Secretary), Bâtarde, Fraktur, Schwabacher, Bastard Capitals, Cadels, Rotunda, Rotunda Capitals, Humanist Minuscule, Italic, Humanist and Italic Capitals, Italic Swash Capitals, Copperplate and Copperplate Capitals (post-Renaissance)

The two weaknesses of the book are 1) It does not discuss inks, and 2) it presents Secretary as a semi-formal bookhand, and does not show any examples of the commonly used Secretary script used by the Elizabethans for everyday writing, such as letters. Most surviving examples of Secretary are considerably less formal and consistent than bookhands.

This is a fantastic book and I would recommend it over Drogin’s Medieval Calligraphy for the beginner. It also has the advantage in presenting Renaissance hands, and in being full-color, so the numerous examples of manuscripts are easier to read and more inspirational.

Drogin, Marc. Medieval Calligraphy. Dover: New York (1980), 198 pp.

This is the classic reference text for medieval calligraphy. It presents all of the major medieval hands, along with historical background and some minimal discussion of technique and materials. It is in black-and-white, so doesn’t really inspire illumination, but presents a variety of examples of the hands so the reader can see the historical variance. The hands covered are:

Roman Rustic (Rustic Capitals), Uncial, Artificial Uncial (Late Uncial), Roman Half-Uncial, Insular Majuscule, Insular Minuscule, Luxeuil Minuscule, Carolingian Minuscule (Caroline), Early Gothic, Gothic Textura Quadrata, Gothic Textura Prescisus, Gothic Littera Bastarda and Cadels

I find Drogin’s lettering diagrams less easy to follow than Harris’s, and it isn’t always clear when letter forms are modernized. I also strongly disagree with some of his comments on materials, particularly the recommendation of fountain pens, although I agree that quills are difficult to use and can be very frustrating and off-putting for beginners (if I couldn’t use a metal-nibbed dip pen, I would be very frustrated right now). Drogin does not cover Cadels as extensively as Harris.

Overall, while Drogin covers fewer hands than Harris, he does so in more depth. The hands are also presented differently. For example, Drogin’s Bastarda does not involve pen rotations (which can be tricky), while Harris’s does. I recommend both books strongly, as they complement each other well.

Johnston, Edward. Writing & Illuminating & Lettering. Pittman: London (1977).

Johnston was first published in 1906, and it’s pretty dense and sometimes hard to follow, but it’s an invaluable resource. It discusses working surface, quill and reed cutting, letter and line spacing, practicing, rubrication, gold, illumination, and just about everything else, and includes numerous black-and-white illustrations. Although some colors and techniques described are post-Renaissance, much is not.

Dawson, Giles E., and Kennedy-Skipton, Laetitia. Elizabethan Handwriting, 1500-1650: A Manual. W.W. Norton: New York (1966), 130 pp.

This is the only book I’ve found so far that really focuses on everyday writing rather than more formal book- or courthands. It focuses primarily upon the Elizabethan Secretary hand, a bastard script, although it also includes some examples of italic cursive (used primarily by women until 1600 or so, but which replaced Secretary in the 17th century) and a few legal and court hands.

The book includes discussion of Elizabethan spelling and the evolution of the Secretary hand, as well as numerous examples of 16th and 17th century handwritten documents with transcriptions, including several plates from various penmanship books. The handwritings presented vary wildly in formality.

It does NOT include any instructions on the hands themselves. However, between the plates from penmanship books and the instructions for Bastard Secretary in Harris, I imagine one could develop one’s own version of Secretary. There is a lot of latitude for variation.

Cennini, Cennino D’Andrea. Il Libro dell’ Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook). Trans. Daniel V. Thompson Dover: New York (1933), 142 pp.

Probably written in the 14th century, this is an amazing primary source on Renaissance painting. Although much of it deals specifically with fresco painting, Cennini also discusses pigments, brushes, drawing with silverpoint, drawing on cloth, and many other topics. For instructions of preparing period pigments, it’s hard to beat Cennini. This English translation divides the text into useful sections, including “On the character of ultramarine blue, and how to make it” and “How to paint a dead man.”

The full text is available free online.

Thompson, Daniel V. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. Dover: New York (1956), 239 pp. (Originally published 1936).

Thompson’s thoroughly researched book covers topics like binding media, gesso, size, oils, pigments, and application of metals in detail. It is an excellent complement to Cennini.

Morgan, Margaret. The Bible of Illuminated Letters. Barron’s Educational Books: Hauppauge, NY (2006), 256 pp.

Although this is aimed at calligraphers inspired by rather than recreating historical work, it does include clear directions for gold and for illuminated letters in several historical styles, including Ottonian. It has some beautiful examples of historical manuscript pages that I haven’t seen elsewhere, and does discuss techniques like writing with thinned gouache for color calligraphy.

However, the hands presented ARE modernized, and design elements should be compared with historical examples before use. Morgan exaggerates the dangers of many historical pigments and recommends some extremely fugitive modern ones.

I like this book for inspiration, but I definitely recommend pairing it with one of the more historically accurate calligraphy books, such as Harris or Drogin.

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Review: The Needlework at Traquair, by Margaret Swain Friday, Feb 8 2008

I haven’t started any new slips yet and I’m sewing in a very halfhearted manner (mostly working on my thesis and such). But I did order a pile of historical needlework books last month, so reviews ahoy. Here’s the first one.

The Needlework at Traquair
Margaret Swain
1984, Traquair House

Traquair House in Scotland is like the Promised Land for enthusiasts of 16th and 17th century needlepoint. As this teeny 12-page pamphlet says in the introduction,

The needlework was made and put away…because of this, most of it has been preserved from light and dust, those to prime destroyers of textiles. We are able to look at the neat stitches and brilliant colours undimmed by time, as fresh as when they were first finished, the thread cut and the needle laid aside.

The pamphlet is black and white, and the pictures are fairly small. The cover, in color, shows a panel of uncut floral slips, some of which are charted in Imogen Stewart’s Classic Needlework, which I’ll review later. It turns out that my columbine is also based on this panel, although it is, I think, smaller and simpler! There’s some good, but basic information about the design and construction of slips. It also shows an unfinished panel of needlepoint which pretty clearly demonstrates that the black outlines were, at least some of the time, cross-stitch (which explains a lot of the stuff I’ve been trying to figure out from the V&A’s almost-but-not-quite-high-res-enough photos). There is a not-very-big photo of some knot-work trim, similar to a small fragment from Hardwick Hall (Traquair has “yards”).

The next section is about colifichets, 18th century French silk embroidery on paper. I’m not really interested in this kind of thing, so I’ll move to the next section.

There’s also a brief description of a secret set of priest’s vestments made from a 17th century white bed quilt (sadly, no picture–I’m trying to find more information about 16th and 17th century quilts), and a description of some bed furnishings (no pictures).

It’s a nice pamphlet with a few good tidbits, but the pictures are few, tiny, and black-and-white. There is also an insufficiency, for me, of dates and discussion of technique and style–but I also think someone badly needs to write a book for Traquair House similar to The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, only with charts included. It’s a good pamphlet to have in your historic needlework library, but tantalizingly brief (it doesn’t discuss the spectacular bird/tree/animal slips now sold as very expensive kits, either). In terms of photographs, though, there are better ones elsewhere (although not good enough!).

You can order the pamphlet from Traquair House. If you don’t live in the UK, shipping will probably cost more than the pamphlet itself.

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