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July 20, 2004 "Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder." Proponents of Calligraphy would, however, disagree. To them, calligraphy - the art of fine writing or scripting - is beauty personified. Calligraphy has its etymological roots in the Greek kalligraphia, meaning "beautiful writing", and is applied to individual letters as well as to entire documents; it is also the study of ancient handwriting and manuscripts (paleography). Calligraphy had its origin in the oriental lands of India, China, and Japan, where it has been a highly respected art form for many centuries. The West, however, was not far behind. Calligraphy eventually evolved in Europe from the earliest cave paintings, such as those (35,000-20,000 BC) at Lascaux, France, into the abstractions that became the familiar letterforms of the alphabet we are familiar today. Nearly 5500 years ago the ancient civilization of Egypt gave birth to one of the most rudimentary forms of calligraphy - hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphics is a writing system that uses symbols or pictures to denote objects, concepts, or sounds, originally and especially in the writing system of ancient Egypt. Egyptians hieroglyphs were treated as sacred inscriptions, and were usually incised on monuments or inside tombs. They were also written on papyrus (an early form of paper made from a rushlike plant growing along the banks of river Nile) using either a brush or a flat-edged pen cut from a river reed to write on papyrus scrolls. Contemporary civilizations like the Sumerians used a stylus of hard wood or bone to press wedged shapes - cuneiform - into clay tablets, which were then baked in the sun. Their idiosyncratic style of writing and the complex system of syllables and words were later adopted by their Babylonian conquerors sand by neighboring Semitic peoples. However, it was not until another 2500 years (around 1000 BC) that the system of letters (alphabets) were conceived by the Phoenicians. Phoenicia was a narrow strip of territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, now largely in modern Lebanon. The traders and seafarers of the eastern Mediterranean were the first to invent a system with 24 letters, written from right to left. Infact, the word "alphabet" is derived from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, "aleph" and "bet". The Greeks were the next to add to the evolution of calligraphy. Around 850 BC they took over alphabetic writing from the Phoenicians, and introduced a writing system having alternate lines written in opposite directions called boustrophedon. Boustrophedon had the first line written from right to left as usual; but then this was followed by a line written from left to right. This peculiarity didn't last long, and finally they settled on left to right, as we still write today. Greek letters were carved into stone, cast in metal, painted on pottery, and written on papyrus. To this the Romans added chisel and mallet to carve inscriptions in stone. The proportions of Roman letters on monumental inscriptions, such as those on Trojan's Column in Rome, have never been surpassed. By the end of 2nd century BC they had adapted the Greek alphabet to the Latin language, changing the shapes to the capital letters used today. With the passage of time writing was pressed with a stylus on wax tablets, which could be erased and reused. A faster script - called cursive - was developed for correspondence. A more lasting material, like a parchment made from animal skin, was used for books or scrolls. In the post-Roman era, the Christian church was the principal guardian of European culture, and kept the torch of calligraphy burning. Monasteries became centers of learning, establishing libraries and copying chambers. Monks copied mostly religious books, as well as some ancient texts; many produced decorated books called illuminated manuscripts. Scribes gradually developed the first minuscules - small letters of the alphabet - most notably in England and Ireland. Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (742-814), was among the greatest of military leaders in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman emperor in 800 AD. During his short reign, Charlemagne built a kingdom that included almost all of western and central Europe and he presided over a cultural and legal revival in Europe that came to be known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Under his influence the English scholars and ecclesiastic Alcuin of York were made to reform handwriting and to have it taught to all government officials and to everyone in the monastery schools. The new writing was slightly sloped, extremely rhythmic, and clear; by joining letters (eliding) now and then, it could be written at greater speed. The script, which became known as Carolingian, is the source of today's printed minuscule. By the end of the 13th century Carolingian letters evolved into compressed and broken forms called black letter. Eventually this became a model for early printing. Then came the legendary Gutenberg Bible. Sometime between 1450 and 1456 Johannes Gutenberg printed the Bible on his press in Mainz, Germany, with movable letters cast from lead. This triggered the printing mania all over the world. While Gutenberg was printing his legendary Bible in Germany, Europe was cradling Renaissance calligraphy in Italy. With Carolingian as a model, Italian scribes developed an elegant, slightly sloped cursive style now called italic. The italic style soon spread throughout Europe. In Renaissance books calligraphy was printed from woodblocks, but in the 17th century wood was replaced by copperplates. These engravings resulted in much finer lines and increasingly elaborate writing books. One of the finest calligraphic artists was Jan van de Velde of Holland. Calligraphic scripts continued to serve as models for type designs. But as commerce took over, penmanship declined. For the businessman and student it was not easy to attain the perfection of the engraved scripts with the use of quill pens. To speed up writing, the pen was held at a far steeper angle, hairlines were thin, and curves and downstrokes swelled with pressure from the hand. Two inventions of the 19th century - the steel pen (imitating the shape of the quill) and the fountain pen - almost ruined the art of calligraphy. Handwriting could hardly be considered calligraphy any longer. The typewriter and the computer of the 20th century added further blows to a dying art. All was not lost, however. William Morris, a mid- 19th-century English poet engaged in a revival of arts and crafts, rediscovered the use of the flat-edged pen. Another Briton, Edward Johnston, carried this revival of interest in calligraphy further through his research at the British Museum, through his calligraphy classes, and with his book "Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering" (first published in 1906 and reprinted to this day). The Society of Scribes and Illuminators in London was founded by his students. Tom Gourdie reintroduced italic in schools in Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany. America had the likes of Platt Rogers Spencer, William Dwiggins, Oscar Ogg, Ray DaBolla and Palmer (with his "push-pull" method of penmanship) to carry on the copperplate tradition in the land of Columbus. ------------ About the author: Mr. Soumya Maitra works as a software developer in an IT firm in Kolkata, India. He has published several popular science articles in various magazines, newspapers, and journals in India, such as Science Reporter, The Statesman, The Telegraph, Wisdom, Bioinformatics India Journal, etc. He can be reached at: soumyamaitra@msn.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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