Saturday, February 26, 2011

Typecast: Tentative Forays into Calligraphy

Hand-written sample here

J. Herbin A la perle des encres calligraphy set

Sliding open - one 30ml bottle of Violette Pensee, one nib holder, five nibs.

Old textbook, entitled Deutsche Schreibschrift (German cursive) that I thought might help. Fat chance. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be writing.

 Violette Pensee and extra fine dip pen nib in action.

9 comments:

  1. wow. I have a real weakness for art supplies in wooden boxes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats!
    If you have calligraphy questions, ask away. I write daily with a dip pen- and also teach calligraphy classes.
    Since you're in Europe, try to find some Brause pen-points. And if you look hard, you'll find points and holders made by Blanzy (France).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, that's a beautiful set! What a pretty box--and the ink is lovely.

    Sounds like you need some nice fountain-pen-friendly paper to go with it. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Speculator: Thanks! I wrote a letter with the dip pen today; my technique does need some work! Let me know what you think are the best online resources to find some calligraphy tips. As for pen points, I'm inundated with them - Brause, Sonnencken, Alpha... I won an assorted lot at auction a while back, and now I have enough to fill four or five matchboxes. Not sure what I'll do with all of them. For the time being, I hollowed out my lovely wooden box by taking out the red presentation piece - if that's the right word - and making it a repository for all my dip pen related stuff.

    @LFP - Indeed, paper is another budding obsession! I have some that is FP friendly and that I'm hoping will be dip pen friendly too, but for this first try I went with the recycled paper just in case I needed to bin my first draft.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is intriguing. I use a fountain pen but have thought a dip pen would be fun. Don't worry about your non-straight lines. Write a lot without lined paper and pretty soon you'll naturally start writing straighter. It's kind of weird how it works that way but you tend to sort of relax after a while and start making good lines.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Snohomish - That is really encouraging advice, thanks! For my letters I often use a very boldly ruled sheet that is included with non-lined writing pads. It is the easy way out, though. I shall make an effort to write more without the guide lines and see if I can improve with time. I addressed a couple of envelopes today and I couldn't write even those straight!

    ReplyDelete
  7. O.K., so now what you'll have to do is join the fountain pen group on Yahoo (where a number of type writer collectors ended up, including yours truly), start scouring ebay for antique fountain pens, ... suddenly discover that you have two addictions and twice as many hobby related bills! Welcome to the club! Oh, and, at least fountain/dip pens are a lot easier to store!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice to see your added comment, Adwoa!

    A few things you might enjoy:
    http://www.learncalligraphy.co.uk/

    http://www.scribblers.co.uk/

    http://www.calligraphylearn.com/

    I'm sure there are classes- or just groups of calligraphers that get together. I'm part of a group here in Maine called The Casco Bay Scribes.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment! Please note that comments are moderated; so this will be posted as soon as I have read it :)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...