Black Letter Capitals

Workshop Description

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.