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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Carolingian

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One of the great achievements of the Emperor Charlemagne, crowned in 800 AD, was the Carolingian Renaissance, a widespread cultural and educational revival.  During this period, Charlemagne mandated the unification of the many and mutually illegible scripts used throughout his vast empire, into a single writing style, which we now call the Carolingian Minuscule.

 

In this workshop, contemporary calligraphers will be introduced to this elegant, legible alphabet, which was the precursor of many writing styles practiced today, notably Italic, Foundational and Humanist Bookhand.  Carolingian was created as a lower case (minuscule) alphabet that functions well with Uncial capital letters.