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.
