Messages

1

Copperplate, Engrosser's Script, Roundhand Calligraphy / Writing on an 1860 design drawing for a horse-drawn carriage

« on: April 01, 2018, 10:59:54 AM »

https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co8032848/drawing-spider-phaeton-carriage-j-gilfoy-for-drawing

"drawing. Spider Phaeton [carriage] /J. Gilfoy for Hooper & Co. (Coach Builders) Ltd., circa 1855-60 "

Can be zoomed in on very large at link.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: 19th Century Hottie Identification Contest Giveaway

« on: August 14, 2017, 06:08:17 PM »

IIRC that's Oliver Goldsmith who was based out of New York and active in the 1840s and 50s teaching "mercantile penmanship". Notable because his book published in 1844 apparently claimed to contain only reproductions of work executed with metal pens, apparently one of the first uses of the word "copperplate" to describe a specific style of writing (as opposed to any style writing which was so perfectly executed it looked like it was engraved) and one of the first American penmanship books to be reproduced by lithography instead of engraving.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Kurrent Font

« on: August 07, 2017, 12:18:58 PM »

There are more than 40 pages of well written kurrent in the Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848 (along with roundhand for the French and Italian sections), there is a high resolution .pdf scan here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Bundesverfassung_1848_-_CH-BAR_-_3529242.pdf&page=4

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Ink Academy's IndieGoGo campaign

« on: May 02, 2017, 06:22:20 AM »

The ink academy has described, on it's indiegogo page, one of the people involved as a professor of calligraphy, but according to the website of the university he works at he is an assistant, not a professor. That could be excused on the grounds of hype and promoting your business, but it raises the question of what else is hype and whether or not it's right to describe someone as a professor when they are not a professor.

The problem with hype, press releases, self promotion &c. is that they produce a situation where many, but not all, people know what is being said isn't strictly truthful but you may be expected to dance around that and be unable to directly address it or else be accused of being negative, jealous &c. and the people who don't realize the hype and self-promotion is hype and self-promotion are set up for disappointment down the road if/when they do realise it.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Ink Academy's IndieGoGo campaign

« on: April 29, 2017, 08:49:48 AM »

With respect to promoting calligraphy, the excellent publications put out in the 19th and early 20th century have no equal today, just as the great skill of the penman then has no equals today in terms of quality of execution of work.

One of the best ways of promoting calligraphy today would be to produce hi-quality reprints of some excellent books and/or materials from that time at different price points.This would allow people to benefit from close and careful study of the finest examples of calligraphy at their leisure, without the problems inherent with videos and internet communications. People in the past were able to achieve the greatest heights of skill by studying and working from books, and there is no reason why this cannot be done today. Books have been around for thousands of years before you-tube and I believe, having worked at a university, that books are better as a learning tool than videos and e-mails &c.

With regard to titles, I believe that works of calligraphy should be able to speak for themselves without needing titles attached to the people who made it. So that said, the title of "Professor of Calligraphy": Is that formally given by the university? Because looking at the website of that univeristy I see that Giovanni De Faccio's title is something that translates as "assistant", and he is not specifically listed as a professor:

https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.ndu.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/mitarbeiterinnen/employee/de-faccio.html&prev=search

With respect to Master Penman , IAMPETH was founded in 1949, but the "Master Penman Society" associated with IAMPETH was created in 2001 by one person, and closed in 2015. The title/society has always attracted controversy as well, since it was created by just one person who decided who could be part of the club, and calling oneself a "Master" is a vast and far-reaching claim to make, especially when there are people of equal or greater skill who do or did not use such a title.

With respect to prices, on the indigogo $449 for "rare handmade ink" is a remarkable price for 25ml of ink, as is $49,999 for "An Original Masterpiece 16x20" by Michael Sull or Barbara Calzolari.

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Everyday Handwriting | Penmanship / A very nice doctors bill from 1832

« on: April 28, 2017, 03:40:20 PM »

Not often you hear nice used in conjunction with doctors bill, but this receipt for paying off one deserves it. The capital M is rather odd and ugly in my opinion, but the rest of it is unusually good. Note the much more angular style of writing on the actual doctors bill to which the receipt is attached.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Ink Academy's IndieGoGo campaign

« on: April 28, 2017, 02:35:43 PM »

Lots of photographs of the people involved, and very little of their calligraphy. Grandiose titles (It seems like everyone involved is a "Grand High Panjadrum Of Penmanship" or something) and claims. I think it's more about image and marketing this "Ink Academy" as a money making venture than promoting calligraphy.

The funding is "flexible" so whether it meets any of its goals they get however much money there is.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: the loss of a few pens

« on: March 10, 2016, 08:12:00 AM »

Empty Of Clouds,

Although you may not want it, which is fine, I do have at hand a wooden Zanerian style oblique holder I don't want or use, and I like sheep because of their rectangular pupils, dainty hooves and legs, fluffy fleeces, dental pads instead of upper teeth, rumination, and loud Baaahs and the islands of New Zealand rise out of the Pacific ocean as a great stronghold of sheep, so I could send you the oblique holder as a small offering in honour of all the sheep in New Zealand. Also "Footrot flats" I like, and that comes from New Zealand.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Vintage Spanish Little treasures

« on: March 10, 2016, 07:55:03 AM »

Very interesting. Especially the long beak pens with the hole. Those seem to have been popular in Italy too. I wonder if they were most popular on the continent but little used in Britain or North America. The ink powder is also very interesting since I wonder how good powdered ink is for calligraphy, since having ink in powdered form to make up does seem very practical.

Also, I happen to be trimming my collection and I have some Spanish calligraphy books from 1944, and I don't know any Spanish so I think the books might be better off with someone who knows Spanish: Inked Botanicals, would you be interested in them? Picture:

http://i.imgur.com/7cwZToQ.jpg

Send me a PM if you want me to post them to you. I'd be happy to do so, in exchange for you making a post giving a bit of information about the books after you've looked at them, since with  me not speaking Spanish I don't really know what they're about except that they're about calligraphy.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Advice & Ideas Requested

« on: March 08, 2016, 09:32:49 PM »

Trust me when I say I'm not in any cliques or secret groups, lol. I more often rub the cliques the wrong way instead of being part.

Ah, that's good then. I worked at a university once and I saw people and cliques fight long and bitterly over distribution of the electronic cards that gave unlimited use of the photocopiers. They fought over so many other things besides, and ever since then I've been wary of cliques and in-groups &c.

There is one thing I'm very curious about though and I'd like to ask you a question, since you have a lot of them: are any of the principalities you have fine or medium, as opposed to E.F? The reason I ask is, I've seen an advert, for Principalities, from 1849:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OX0BAAAAYAAJ&dq=gillott%20principality&pg=PA244#v=onepage&q&f=false

Where fine and medium pointed ones are mentioned as well as the extra fine, and I wonder if they stopped making F and M ones at some point, or if that advert is for a different pen with the same name, though given that it mentions the great elasticity of the pen.

I think it's also worth mentioning that not everyone who is selling these 'dream' nibs at high prices are necessarily money grabbing so and sos.  People have to make a living, and if you had several gross of dream nibs with no other source of income, what would you do?

Well, I don't know of anyone in that situation, but If I was think I'd look for more sustainable source of income because I think that the vintage dip pen bubble will burst, and also depending on the persons circumstances he or she might just be delaying the inevitable e.g being unable to make mortgage payments due to interest rate rises, scrabbling around with selling possessions &c. might only buy a few more months before defaulting. I've seen that happen.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Advice & Ideas Requested

« on: March 08, 2016, 06:37:22 PM »

The idea of a network of 'trusted distributors' or having to have sponsors who vouch for you just for the privilege of handing your money over to the 'trusted distributors' sounds ripe for abuse by way of people making sure that only their friends and people they approve of being able to buy some of these dip pens, plus of course the question of who judges the judges and all that.

I want to see the ebay bubble surrounding vintage dip pens burst and establishing secretive networks to distribute dip pens would just be some  new way of keeping the pens out the hands of people who can use them.

I think that the dip pens should either be simply sold on the open market (I'd be most curious to see how much they'd all fetch if they were all to be auctioned as one big lot on ebay) and the money donated to some worthy cause or perhaps in sets of, let's say, 36 of each pen, and someone can buy one set per person per lifetime.

Vintage dip pens are good in themselves due to their high quality, but the profiteering and 'dream nibs' hyperbole and people paying $500+ for about 30 dip pens (I saw this happen on ebay a few days ago) is very bad and I hope it stops. 

I've seen cases where someone has bought a one gross (i.e 144) box of dip pens at a pretty good price (e.g $30) and then the person starts selling each dip pen individually for $1 or more: I've actually recognized the exact same box from comparing pictures.

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Copperplate, Engrosser's Script, Roundhand Calligraphy / Re: Good exemplars for flourished Copperplate capitals

« on: March 01, 2016, 07:38:14 AM »

Hi-res scans from Valliciergo's book are here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pepel/sets/72157626039945504/

The picture from his book that you found on the online auction site is here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pepel/5442158492/in/album-72157626039945504/

And clicking on the arrow in the bottom right corner, you can download it at up to 4752 x 3472 px.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Mystery Tool

« on: February 27, 2016, 06:00:15 PM »

Do the two metal parts retract, or move? Could it be a pen knife? It wasn't uncommon for them to have two blades (one for general 'pen knife' use, one specifically for nibbing quills with) and the handle is the right kind of shape to be a pen knife.

I've also seen vaccination 'nibs' and lino cutter 'nibs' which can be inserted into pen holders, so I suppose perhaps they could be that sort of thing.

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Copperplate, Engrosser's Script, Roundhand Calligraphy / Re: "Lectures On The Art Of Writing" by Joseph Carstairs

« on: January 01, 2016, 06:43:40 PM »

Joseph Carstairs was my fourth Great-Grandfather so I am very keen to have as much information as I possibly can.  I already learnt a lot from this post - the fact he had a partner called Mr Trail, for example. He wrote a long (epic) poem on London which is in the Guildhall Library and in the British Library are various letters in his own beautiful hand, to one of his daughters who had moved to Cheltenham.  Please do send me any relevant links to Joseph  - I am particularly keen to find an Obituary.

I'm glad it could be of some use and I thank you for your information, I am very glad to know that some things written by Carstairs exist. I have not found an obituary,  but the last book I've found that he published was in 1843: 'Carstairs' national system of penmanship'. The Bodlian library has a copy of that book, it is of course purely about penmanship.

There was another writing master in the early 19th century called James Henry Lewis who had a long running dispute with Carstairs over who originated what, and he wrote about it in his book: 'The Royal Lewisian system of penmanship':

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433082130737;view=2up;seq=32

In there, one James Mowat claims that Carstairs was originally working as a tailor and that when he (Mowat) was teaching penmanship in Sunderland and Newcastle Carstairs took lessons from him there and afterwards moved to London.

Lewis also states that Carstairs was employed at one point by (the Scottish radical MP) Joseph Hume.

Do you have any pictures of the letters Carstairs wrote? I'm exceptionally interested in seeing examples of writing from him.

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Copperplate, Engrosser's Script, Roundhand Calligraphy / Re: Corsiva compared to Scrittura Inglese. Italy, 1898

« on: December 14, 2015, 05:58:42 PM »

3mm x-height! Oh my god. And that kind of precision, using a quill. I'm gonna need to take a break, where's the wine...

I believe that he must have used a steel pen, because he specifically recommends certain pens on some of the plates, such as the Perry No. 27, 81 or 82, and these instruction materials were intended for use in certain types of Italian schools.

I have an example of real writing: not a reproduction, by Giovanni Tonso.

I bought a book he'd authored ('Nozioni di Metodologia per gli aspiranti all'insegnamento della Calligrafia', 1901 printing), and the book had a handwritten dedication by him to the recipient of this copy of the book. Unfortunately, the book was rebound and the binder trimmed part of the name off, but the x-height of the smallest writing here is about 1mm and the name about 3mm:





Cav. must be Cavaliere, but I don't know what Rag. is.

Here, from the book, is a photograph of Giovanni Tonso with a facsimile of his signature: