This column contains the main body of text found in many
newsletters of the Calligraphy Society of Ottawa during the period
1992-1995 when I held its office of President. These passages through time are
intended to convey personal views about calligraphy and aspects of the
visual arts to calligraphers and interested readers everywhere.
In the beginning the dawn of human history was borne by
salient manifold oral traditions, - sacred to all they were nar
rated by that towering lonely figure, the clan storyteller, the
recorder. The evolution of thought and the quest for knowledge of
all things natural imposed onerous demands on our primitive his
torians who, faced with imminent extinction, abandoned their
privileged roles in order to adapt themselves to the nouveau
milieu created by the advent of that novel idea, - chronicling
the past by means of inscriptions onto various surfaces. And the
scribe was born so that local history could someday become uni
versal. Universality promoted understanding, and understanding, -
growth.
This is our heritage ... and there is history because of
the painstaking efforts of former scribes and copyists who for
hundreds of years wrote by candlelight cursing their quills and
the arthritis in their fingers ... they wrote of our past on
leaves of vellum so that their legacy would withstand the sands
of time, so that we could learn of the triumphs and failures of
our ancestors. Without them the knowledge of our past would be
confined to merely 500 years.
1492. Scarcely 40 years have elapsed since Gutenberg manufactured a printing
press, a device which would forever change the course of the lives of scribes and illuminators.
Printed bibles became widespread across Europe and classic manuscripts were now printed en
masse for scholarly use as well as for posterity. Leonardo Da Vinci was travelling throughout
Italy attempting to subdue his insatiable thirst for knowledge and preparing the way for one of his
most enterprising and critical works,- the Last Supper. Raphael, a mere 9 years young, played
unhindered through the streets of Urbino while Michelangelo, a restless 17 year old, has just
completed his first major sculpture, a marble relief gently titled The Madonna of the Stairs.
Scribes were left pondering the sudden decrease in demand for the production of Books of Hours
while illuminators wrestled with the seemingly futile task of decorating letters in printed books
knowing that, they too, would become obsolete some day... the unforgiving advance of history.
1992. Few scribes write complete books now,- time is spent in the artistic pursuit
of fashionable trends in the consumer markets. The recently instituted CSO Scholarship is
designed to foster the growth of the hand of the novice in the hope that vision may not be stifled
through lack of concern. In a sense, you represent the future of our craft, your respect and your
dedication to it will be a tribute to the legacy left by those unknown hands whose traces fill the
shelves of our esteemed libraries.
The evolution of a scribe's personal hand is a very slow and labor intensive enterprise.
Knowledge and technique was, with perhaps, very few exceptions, always obtained under the
tutelage of a master,- the one who steered a workshop of many highly specialized craftspersons.
The course of study was normally 7 years by which time the apprentice could then open his/her
own workshop and continue the tradition, a custom which essentially vanished shortly after the
turn of the 19th. century. And so Verrocchio was the master of Leonardo while Ghirlandaio
became the first teacher of Michelangelo who, in turn, instructed Vasari; Giulio
Romano molded the great Renaissance illuminator, Giulio Clovio, dubbed the "Michelangelo of
the miniature" by Vasari, while Clovio, it is said, fashioned the hand of El Greco...
And the craft evolved ... and the arteficers (as they called themselves) surrendered their
brushes and pens to their pupils whose "sole purpose was to surpass the master" (Leonardo).
The acquisition of a hand, any hand, (italics or chancery cursive, gothic, ...) will for the
most part entail a lifelong commitment to its demands. After a few years of dedicated work, your
own rendering of a hand may be recognized by an experienced scribe in the sense that some
minute characteristic feature is bound to reveal itself to the extent that it will reflect your own
personal style. Still, your hand needs to evolve if our craft is to survive the current spread of
"calligraphy software" now available for personal computers. I feel that we are at a crossroads
once again, not unlike the one facing scribes during the period immediately following the
discovery of the printing press. How are we to react ...? This is the challenge that each serious
scribe will need to address today, one that will require your imaginative efforts... one that will
ensure our survival as recorders of the spoken word.
It was a time, not long ago, a time during which Leonardo da Vinci, in his sixties and
residing in France, saw the birth of one of the most prolific, versatile and sensational scribes in the
history of our craft; one who would become a curly-haired cultured intellectual with large
watchful eyes and a copious beard, one who would, it is alleged, master some thirty different
languages and write in each one of them, one who would cherish his Roman citizenship as well as
his election to various academies of the period, one who is remembered even today through the
various fonts named after him ...
And so Giovambattista Palatino was born in the town of Rossano, in Calabria, Italy,
around the year 1515. His legacy is one which time will not efface... it includes a writing manual
with essays on the chancery cursive (upon which most italic fonts today are based), cryptography
(intended for other secretaries of the period so as to conceal confidential information), detailed
discourses on the correct way of holding a quill, body position while lettering, the shapes and
sizes of individual letter forms, recipes for making ink, and, among other passages, one which
directs the reader to use broad based ink stands so as to virtually eliminate the odd accidental
spill.
Jean de Beauchesne occupies a privileged position among the writing masters of the
sixteenth century as he gave Elizabethan England its first printed writing manual. Born in Paris
around 1540 he very likely apprenticed with one of the writing masters of the day, perhaps, Pierre
Hamon (dubbed the Master of the Golden Quill and secretary to the chancery of King Charles
IX). The political climate in France being what it was at the time, he decided to emigrate to
England and there wrote his famed writing manual.
Late evening, spring, dusk. The young one stoops over the shoulder of the aging teacher as a
wrinkled yet delicate hand surprises the skin it is etching with a broad edged quill. A chin leans
against the withered extremity of a broom handle and, once again, the dilated pupils witness
history in the making... the apprentice.
The medieval artist or illuminator was very much an artificer whose work was seldom confined to
the making of paintings or illuminations. It is perhaps surprising that the sale of harnesses and
saddles would be commonplace in the workshops of Florentine artists. The immortal painters
Duccio and Simone Martini regularly took on such relatively lowly tasks as the painting of book
covers, the decoration of banners and saddles etc. In some cases, painters provided designs to be
used by others in order to make stained glass windows, mosaics, etc. There is documentary
evidence that a woman held a workshop in Florence during the year 1295 when she took on an
apprentice to teach him the art of painting over a four year interval.
The period of apprenticeship varied greatly. The Florentine guild (to which local artists belonged)
had ruled that apprenticeship should cover a period of at least three years, if paid for by the
student, and a period of at least six years, if paid for by the workshop owner (usually dubbed, the
master). Each master could take on only one apprentice at a given time and there was even a
probationary time frame of 20 days after which the successful candidate would sign a contract
with the master in the presence of a notary describing the details of the apprenticeship. Still, an
apprentice had to have at least three years of experience as a painter before a master could be
sought for further training. The tasks taken on by a novice within a workshop included sweeping
the floors, grinding pigments, cutting quills, etc. It was clearly a long and arduous route, one
which brought little, if any, recognition unless the master was fortunate enough to have many
patrons.
It seems that I may have left you in limbo, a few passages ago, at a point when I questioned the
various fads in the world of calligraphy. I am aware that I did not reply to the many questions that
I raised, partly because I wished that everyone would think about the answer that would seem
most appropriate to them. On the other hand, my own views on this subject remained undisclosed.
Still, some of you wished to know my world view on the matter, and so, for those of you who are
interested, I will describe it here. You will have noticed undoubtedly that each one of my
newsletter columns was the fruit of historical investigations, research whose scope was connected
ultimately and intimately to the appearance of this one special column. The exercise of writing
was born out of the necessity to communicate the oral word in a fashion that would render it
permanent, to the extent that this was possible: The figurative interpretation of language was at
the heart of every scribe's motivation. It was this "figurative interpretation" which, I believe,
formed the basis for the technique of illumination and for the creation of all the different "hands"
which appeared throughout the ages. Such is history... And we need to look around us and learn
to reinterpret this audio-visual-technological world in a manner that would allow us to relate it all
on some writing surface, - to take language, once again, and spread it, and reinterpret it, and
mold it, with our writing implements, so that future generations may visualize and read the
individual's own, personal, and historical perspective of a fully technocratic world narrated by
marks and symbols and sketches left by a human hand ... To immortalize the word! Every sound
that is carved out by a scribe becomes a testament to that individual's feelings and outlook; the
strengths and weaknesses are laid bare before a reader, as is the skeleton of a human's
imagination. This ... all reduces to the purely subjective interpretation of sounds as symbols, the
active interplay between the spoken and the written word, and our own reaction to it all.
Paris, the 1780's: Amongst the turmoil of pre-revolutionary France, there strolls one, simple,
cultured and animated spirit complete with a goose quill adorning a weathered old hat. Dressed like
a musketeer from bygone times, an ink pouch falls unhindered from a leather belt as it surrounds a
slimming waist destined to reveal an agent from the lower class. The burden of a folding writing table
suspended from a slightly hunched back hinders the daily walk to the Palais grounds ... the Poète
des boulevards ... a "street poet" of sorts. The poet awaits a pair of customers, where the one is
unable or unwilling to express heartfelt emotions through words to the other... As the couple nears,
the quill is whipped from its resting place and poetic words are carefully registered for the pleasure
of both. During this brief period, it is the Poète who becomes the articulator of passions, the recorder
of untold virtues, the friend, and the lover. At the end of this active interchange the couple wanders
away, paper in hand, letters flowing from a page and into their mutual history.