Historical Hands

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In keeping with our commitment to calligraphy education, the Gentle Penman is pleased to announce a new series of short workshops, which will serve as an introduction to a selection of styles of traditional calligraphy over the past 2000 years.

 

The workshops will focus on broad-edged pen hands (scripts) with an emphasis on the basics: pen angle, letter proportions and "family groups" in order that students can build on these fundamentals to develop an understanding of our craft.  These workshops will be relatively short, two 2-hour sessions for each hand, emphasizing basic skills rather than design and layout. Our purpose is to create a foundation for further study.

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With the exception of the first workshop, The Foundational Hand, we will offer these workshops in historical sequence.  The next workshop will be Roman Capitals (see below); subsequent workshops will include Uncial, Carolingian, Gothic, etc.  Students are welcome to sign up for individual workshops or take advantage of the full series of Historical Hands.

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Black Letter Capitals

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Black Letter or Gothic capitals generally serve as a decorative, ornamental contrast with the simple, narrow forms of the minuscules.  When we look at medieval manuscripts, we can see a breathtaking range of capital letter possibilities, often based on Roman or Uncial forms, enhanced with multiple strokes and flourishes, as well as decorated, painted borders, gilding and colorful backgrounds.

 

This class will concentrate on "pen-made" letters, forms that we can create with our broad-edged pens.  This workshop will introduce you to some of the exciting options available to calligraphers working with such scripts as Textura, Rotunda, and the more modern hand, Gothicized Italic.  We will look at and experiment with some of the letters that both harmonize and contrast with these and other alphabets.

 

Like other workshops in the Historical Hands series, this class will be part hands-on and part observation, in order to introduce you to some new and interesting letterforms and prepare you to go further in your Black Letter studies.

 

Participants should be familiar with the broad-edged pen.  Some experience with Black Letter minuscules is helpful.