Why Spencerian?

[AndyT]

Have you ever considered a career in the diplomatic corps, Debbie? 

[syed sha abulhassan Quadr]

Wow guys.  Totally north pole and south pole unite on this forum that's why I love this forum. 
For my opinion both are great form of scripts.  I am now practicing spencerian script.  Next is copperplate style. Because I found spencerian is hard and it will give great controls over your pen.  So copperplate will be easy to learn once I got good control over my hand and pen.
Both scripts is like the 2 sides of a coin for me. 

[FlowerCityLetters]

I had a similar experience to Schin. I liked the look of basically all calligraphy, but I took one look at a letter written in Spencerian and my brain was like wowza, this is something. I couldn't stop looking at examples. The lightness of the hand and elegance combined with the shading reminded me of a field with blooming flowers. I like the fact that the shading is up to the calligrapher, I think it allows for personality to shine through in such a pretty way. I love everything about Spence, the lowercase and shading, and the majuscules are just stunning. Watching someone write in ornamental penmanship is something I will never tire of; I could watch it all day. I hope one day I can write spence with the lightness and elegance I so admire (gonna try at least!).

I can't fully explain why it's so pleasing to my eye - but I get very happy when I see anything in Spencerian, and it does remind me of nature. I also really like that it is more handwriting rather than drawing letters. There's something about knowing that people in the past used Spence to pen all kinds of letters and documents that appeals to me - that it was used as beautiful correspondence and not just to add flair (not that other styles exist just for this purpose).

I was a bit sad when I started learning that there seemed to be a lack on enthusiasm about Spencerian compared to Copperlate or Modren calligraphy - but at least here I am among "my people" haha.

[sybillevz]

Wow, I learned a lot about calligraphy history in this thread !
I recently read a book by the french calligraphy "master" Claude Mediavilla, it covers all the traditional calligraphic hands and even has a chapter on gestural calligraphy... In the chapter about copperplate, there is just one small paragraph about spencerian (it is not named though) where the author just says that this "evolution of copperplate carried the seeds of its decadence within itself"... I was appalled!!! I still love the copperplate exemplar in the book, though. 

I started learning spencerian in september and my love for this hand only grows with time. At first I found it very "mechanical", but as I started to study the masters specimens, my love for it grew more and more. It is definitely not a very familiar hand for us europeans (Some capitals are just not legible for us), but all I can say is that I cannot understand how one can find it "decadent"!

Both hands are absolutely gorgeous in my opinion, but there is something more subtle about spencerian that I find fascinating.  I also heard Paul Antonio say that once you learn spencerian, it changes the way you write any other hand because of the muscular movement... That is very true, my hand does not move in the same way as before, I love it changed me!

[Sarah Foutz]

but all I can say is that I cannot understand how one can find it "decadent"!

I like to think of Spencerian as a "decadent dessert," a true feast for the eyes!! Luscious swirls of chocolate, creamy filling....copperplate can eat my heart out!!!

*Even though I can't write either of them proficiently...but like a dessert, it doesn't keep me from enjoying them both immensely!!!

[sybillevz]

Ok, I hadn't thought of that meaning of decadent... well maybe then, but still...

[Sarah Foutz]

Who knows which meaning they were trying to convey...beauty is and will always be in the eyes of the beholder, right?

[AndyT]

That notion of pointed pen scripts being "decadent" goes back to Edward Johnston and by extension to romantic Victorian British ideas about the middle ages.  One thing I've noticed about the books which perpetuate the idea is that, if they do include a pointed pen exemplar, sure as eggs is eggs it'll have been subcontracted out to someone else.  Pay no attention. 

[sybillevz]

You're right Andy... But the thing is Claude Mediavilla is one of THE most renowned french speaking calligraphers and his copperplate is absolutely fabulous... The way he mentions spencerian in the book is just to say "don't bother, it's not worth it".  I guess he never tried it, he might have liked it... I know I do.

[AndyT]

I think some people take an either/or attitude towards roundhand and Spencerian, as well as the old broad pen/flexible pen thing.  I'm guilty of that myself, since although I love seeing other peoples' copperplate I have no interest whatever in doing it myself.  (Maybe that's because copperplate is used so indiscriminately in advertising here whenever designers want a lazy shorthand for traditional, elegant and respectable.  Which is fair enough for an unimaginative Savile Row tailor, but not for a supermarket's more expensive range of sausages). 

To a European sensibility, Spencerian is quite unfamiliar and exotic - less staid than our roundhand, but hardly decadent.  It's such a strange word to use.  Now, it may well be le mot juste for high Art Nouveau lettering (which I adore), but even the most florid examples of Ornamental Penmanship have a good deal of formality and restraint.  I think I detect a hint of Old World snobbery.

[sybillevz]

Snobbery is exactly the word I'd use in this particular case. The thing is I find it so sad to have such an attitude...
I mean, I'm not particularly drawn to broad pen calligraphy but learning pointed pen taught me just how hard calligraphy can be, I can only admire the beautiful work of other more traditional calligraphers, I respect them and their work and go on my own path... even though I know I won't be recognised as a "proper" calligrapher in Belgium unless I do broad pen work... They just think I have a nice handwriting.

[Ken Fraser]

There is considerable diversity in the interpretation of this script.
These examples were written with an Esterbrook 357 nib in an oblique holder and Higgin ink.

[Blotbot]

Interesting!  I was recently told that a noted local broad edge expert called copperplate a "bastard hand".  I wonder why hands are considered legitimate or bastard?  I wonder where these view points orginated?  Edward Johnson?  He has a lot to answer for!

[AndyT]

This business of debased scripts would be a good deal more interesting were the experts to pinpoint exactly when and how they lost legitimacy.  Presumably they're cool with Cancellaresca, which is where copperplate comes from ultimately.

I've pointed a finger at Alfred Fairbank before, who was particularly keen to cast doubt on the parentage of pointed pen scripts, but at least he was forthright about it.  He took the view that the rot set in before 1600, and singled out Hercolani's Lo Scritto' Utile et brieve Segretario (1574) for opprobrium because of the bulbous ascenders and the fact that the exemplars were engraved, which "tended to give to the pupil the letter-forms proper to the burin rather than to the quill, and to lead the writing masters to the use of a needle-pointed flexible pen".  Seems to me that his problem was as much with the instrument as with the writing itself, and that to Fairbank anything between A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of Handes and Edward Johnston was infra dig.

It's all very silly, but I do think that if there's a valid point to be made it's the one about engraving.  Not that it reflects badly on the people who can imitate an engraved script with a pen - quite the reverse.  However there's a bit of fuss made in British calligraphy circles about forms which are appropriate to the instrument, and there's a grain of sense in that.  Of course in my opinion Spencerian is entirely in harmony with the pointed steel pen ... so much for that then. 

[schin]

As always, your writing is amazing and a pleasure to study, thanks Ken!