Here is a quick overview over the new book by Barbara Calzolari!! I didn't find the original thread where we talked about it, but I hope those who are interested will find it here.
The book comes in a nice little box, it's a paperback and there are some nice goodies also in the box: a brush pen, a fineliner from Pentel, a sketch booklet made of Kraft paper, and some info / advertising from Pentel.
The book itself contains of three parts: one historical information chapter, several chapters with practical introduction and pointed pen exemplars, then comes a third part about 'calligraphy of the world' – outstanding contemporary calligraphers.
I can't say much about the historical and the third chapter, my Italian simply is not good enough and as I have fairly lots of knowledge and information about script history already, that was not the reason I bought the book.
The practical section is why I really love the book. This is only about pointed pen, and that means not only nib, but also pencil, fineliner and brush. She teaches such different hands as
- a Grotesk Capitals Alphabet (based on Roman Majuscules), written with pencil,
- then a Cursive that is a charming and to my knowledge unique mixture of Italic and Spencerian / American Business Hand – less slanted than Spencerian, but a real running hand with ligatures (other than classical Italic), with two sets of capitals, one based on Italic, the other on Spencerian. This is shown as monoline written with fineliner.
- Copperplate (Corsivo inglese) written with nib and oblique holder. Beautiful.
- Last comes what for me is most interesting because I don't have any book about that already, the chapter about brush script. She shows two different exemplars, one that looks to me like a typical brush script style, the other is based on Copperplate forms. Also, amazing …
Every practical chapter comes with drills / exercises, letter variants, and explanations about hand posture etc. Because of the fact that my Italian is basic at best (I could order an espresso, but to understand calligraphy lingo is something else …), I can't say a lot about these, although luckily some handwritten information is actually in English! I don't want to complain about the fact that it is Italian, I just think that this book would get an even bigger audience if it had been maybe bilingual … so that is the only downside about the book, for those who don't speak Italian.
On the other hand the pictures are big and well made, so they speak for themselves. Throughout the book are some illustrative pages with the gorgeous, highly aesthetic and sometimes even funny calligraphy by Barbara.
I bought the book on Amazon.de for 17,00 €, they ship internationally (not too expensive from Germany), at the moment it is even on sale for about 15,00 €.
I'm really happy and can't wait to start brush lettering!!
