Historical Hands

​

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.

​

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.

​

Rotunda

​

Often overlooked in the study of Black Letter scripts, Rotunda is a remarkably legible, elegant hand that combines strong vertical forms with rounded ones, creating a wonderful play between the letters and the spaces inside and between them.  Used primarily in southern Europe in the 14th and 15th century, it was often employed for secular purposes, documents and large-scale music manuscripts.  The music manuscripts were used at the time for church choirs to see from a distance, i.e., rather than having individual psalm books, the Rotunda music pages could be displayed on a podium, visible to all.  In this workshop we will study the basic forms of the Rotunda minuscule, and some of this fascinating "conjoined" letters, created by overlapping forms.  Because of the complexity of some of the strokes, we recommend this class for students who are familiar with the broad-edged pen and the basic principles of Black Letter.