History of Calligraphy

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HISTORY OF

Calligraphy

ART
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The word calligraphy comes from the Greek words kallos and graphos, meaning "beautiful"
and "writing," or "drawing."

Today calligraphy not only refers to well-made letter shapes but also to their decorative
arrangement. It differs from good handwriting by a conscious intent to create and arrange
letters attractively. Legibility is often of secondary value, but craft and skill of execution are
always important in calligraphy.

Non-Western

Oriental

Calligraphy in China and Japan has had a longer tradition than in the West, and it is
considered an art equal to painting and poetry. Oriental calligraphy is traditionally done with
a brush and ink on paper or silk. In the Far East the expressive quality of the characters is
more important than neatness of execution. Spontaneity and freshness are also prized.

Hebrew

Throughout the world, wherever Jews have lived, they have spoken and/or written differently
from the non-Jews around them. Their languages have differed by as little as a few
embedded Hebrew words or by as much as a highly variant grammar. A good deal of
research has been devoted to a number of Jewish languages, including Yiddish,
Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Italian, Jewish English, and Jewish Neo-Aramaic.*
Calligraphy in different linguistic structures was been developed under different set of
historical-ethnographical factors and philological peculiarities. In China, for example, the
craft of calligraphy has a much longer history, than the western type, and it became to be
artistically valued, as much as other existing fine arts - painting, music or poetry. This matter
is different in Jewish culture. Like other constituents of the Jewish civilization, sacral Jewish
calligraphy, draws its origins from the biblical times, from the very moment of granting
Moses with Torah on the Sinai Mountain. Secular Jewish calligraphy: Strict regulations,
prescribed for Jewish sacral calligraphy, and the prohibition to apply the "Ashuri" script in
everyday writing, resulted in the invitation of the alternative scripts, such as "Rashi",
"Ashkenazian", and "Rabbinical". And yet, secular calligraphy, as a fine art, had reached
significant heights in its evolution due to the undeniable elegancy and esthetics of all its
scripts. The calligraphic letters and scripts were bewitching the imagination of many a great
artist - Durer, Raphael, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and others - to include these Hebrew letters
into their paintings, picturing Biblical tales.**

Arabic

Although a distinctive Arabic calligraphic style did not appear until after the 7th century,
calligraphy is also considered a fine art in the Muslim world. Because the Islamic religion
forbids the representation of humans in art, calligraphy is a chief art not only for
manuscripts but also for decoration. The principal writing tool is the broad-edged reed pen
with ink, and writing is on paper or parchment. There are several traditional styles, and skill
of execution and cleverness in arranging letters is highly appreciated.

Western

Common writing tools in Western calligraphy are the pen and the brush. Pens are made
from reeds, feathers, or metal, and their ends can be shaped to a broad edge or a pointed,
flexible tip. Writing fluids include inks, colored dyes, and opaque pigments. Paper or
specially prepared animal skins, such as vellum or parchment, are common writing
surfaces, though wood, cloth, and papyrus can also be used.

Writing on harder surfaces, such as stone or metal, is more easily done with a brush.
Brushes of animal hairs or synthetic fibers are gathered to form a broad edge or fine point.
They are more flexible than pens. Water- or oil-based inks or paints can be used with
brushes on any surface that is not too porous or that does not repel the writing fluid.

Other tools include the mallet and metal chisel for carving wood or stone, hard metal or
diamond points for engraving metal or glass, and ordinary writing and drawing instruments
such as ballpoint pens, felt- or fiber-tipped markers, chalk, pencils, and even spray paints.

The interaction of tools, writing fluids, and surfaces can affect the appearance of letters. A
stiff, broad-edged pen makes a curved stroke that gradually tapers from thin to thick to thin,
while a flexible pen point or brush can produce thicks and thins on any part of a letter
depending on pressure.

Thick paints, rough surfaces, or the use of mallet and chisel are more often associated with
large writing than with small. A blunt pointed tool, like a ballpoint or fiber-tipped pen,
produces a letter that has no noticeable thicks and thins on either curved or straight strokes.
Such letters are termed monoline.

While writing can be traced back for thousands of years, the decorative use of the alphabet
in the West dates from about the 6th century BC and first appears in the formal writings of
the Greeks. Most surviving examples, called inscriptional letter, are carved in stone, but a
few manuscripts exist that show a different style. Both early forms are basically monoline
and rarely show the small ticks at the beginnings or ends of strokes called serifs. Small, or
minuscule, letters do not occur in Greek calligraphy of the classical era.

Roman inscriptional capitals called majuscule are considered the most elegant form in the
Western world. Even 2,000 years after their original design, serifed capital letters are called
roman.

Similar capitals in Roman books of the 4th and 5th centuries are shaped like the
inscriptional forms, but there is a greater contrast between thick and thin strokes. These
formal book hands are called square capital.

At the same time another formal roman style called rustic was popular. Rustic was also
used for inscriptions, and sometimes both rustic and Roman majuscule were used in the
same carving.

With the rise of Catholicism in the 4th century, a new formal writing style emerged. Uncial,
Latin for "inch-high," letters were a Roman adaptation of a contemporary Greek hand. By the
6th century AD another style called half uncial developed. Like uncial, it was squarish in
appearance.

A less formal style also came from humanistic writing. When written rapidly, letters tended
to slope to the right, were made without lifting the pen for each stroke (as was done for
formal hands), and were joined by a diagonal connecting stroke. By the end of the 15th
century, this informal cursive was elevated to a book hand called chancery cursive--named
after the Vatican Chancery where it was used--or as it is known today, italic.

It is believed that the introduction of printing from movable type in the middle of the 15th
century marked the death of calligraphy. Obviously, handwritten books could not be
produced as fast or in as great quantity as printed ones, but the art hardly disappeared--it
only changed direction. Printing also served to spread and standardize calligraphy.

Until the 16th century only churchmen, academics, and professional copyists could write. An
even smaller number wrote calligraphic hands. Political, social, and economic factors
changed this in the latter half of the century, and writing spread to the educated classes. In
order to make writing a practical and easy skill, letters were simplified. Letters made with a
continuous stroke were preferred over those that were unconnected and that required two or
more strokes. The result was what is now called copperplate.

Calligraphy continued to exist but more as a curiosity than as an art form. Flourishes
became an end unto themselves and rarely bore any relationship to the text they decorated.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, calligraphy more and more took on its second meaning of
beautiful drawing, and by the early 19th it was for all practical purposes dead.

The modern revival is credited to the English scribe Edward Johnston. He was encouraged
to study calligraphy by colleagues of William Morris, who had experimented in writing out
books in the medieval manner in the 1870s. Johnston began studying early manuscripts
and rediscovered the use of the broad-edged pen and how letters were made with it. In
1906 he published 'Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering', often referred to as the
"calligrapher's bible." He adapted a carolingian style into what he called his foundational
hand.

Johnston trained many students who became professional calligraphers and teachers, and
through them the English calligraphic tradition has continued unbroken.***

HISTORY OF CALLIGRAPHY
HANDWRITING TOOLS

* Excerpted from www.jewish-languages.org
** Excerpted from www.goldenscribe.com
*** The text in this article was contributed by Robert Williams, Assistant Design Manager, University of
Chicago Press; calligrapher and author of numerous articles in calligraphic journals.