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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Roman Capitals

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The Roman alphabet -- or the calligraphy that we now identify as Roman Capitals -- has is origins in the "inscription capitals", i.e., the letters that were cut in stone in ancient Rome, most famously in the Trajan Inscription, dated 113 A.D.  These letters form the basis of much that follows in the history of calligraphy.

 

In this workshop, we will study the structure of these letters and see how brilliantly they follow mathematical principles, with most letters fitting into squares, half squares or three-quarter squares. We will work with pencils as well as the broad-edged pen to learn to create these beautifully shaped, elegant letterforms.