Practicing abecedarian sentences for class. That fox never rests.
I felt the need for yellow ink and spring poetry on this chilly day! I’m playing around with this e e cummings poem. Not sure where it’s going but it’s a great diversion!
Oh, calligraphy. Practice may not make perfect, but it does make Dumbledore hands.
I fell across a very amusing/bizarre phrenology book today, Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (via Public Domain). According to Vaught, you can learn a lot from a person’s character not only from his skulliest skull, but his writing as well.
Anyone who writes this way is subject to flattery. Remember that appropativeness is the center of flattery. It is the only faculty that likes it.
Don’t give yourself away in your writing; particularly your weakness.
It is my goal this week to make the most approbative letters possible! I’d rather be subject to flattery than make an ugly cautious “C”.
Copperplate 1 classes are coming to an end at Soceity of Scribes spring 13 session. It has been an amazing class with the talented and hillarious Elinor Holland.
Her take on the upper case letter P.
P’s are like breasts. They should not droop. We cannot help our own but we can help our P’s
This is a death threat letter addressed to Dr. Van Meter (a co-founder of Goucher College) from the Black Hand Society from 1913 (100 years ago this past month!). The Black Hand Society was a group of extortionists from Southern Italy with very little formal education, that immigrated to America in the late 1800’s. By 1900, they had established operations in most major cities with Italian communities including Detroit, NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
They threatened individuals who they knew to be wealthy, demanding money be dropped in a specific place at a specific time. In this letter, they demanded the 500 ”gold notes” be dropped at Maryland and 24th which is one of the entrances to the old Goucher campus in Baltimore.
We have no record of whether or not Dr. Van Meter went through with this, but he did not die at the hands of this Black Hand Society, so we are guessing that he probably did. Pretty neat find in the SC&A, this job never gets old, does it?
Wow.wow.wow
Esterbrook nibs. There is no nib before you.
Our friend’s awesomely lettered Save the Date. This is what happens when a Bride and Groom both work in Branding and Design. It looks straight out of Quills!
Homework finished! Dinosaur alphabet.
Finding calligraphy everywhere I go.It’s the perfect “S”. Never mind that it’s street garbage.
Shhhh! Skipping lunch to practice calligraphy in the New York Public Library today. Bad for my health but sooo good for my soul.
Engrosser’s Script
Jake Weidmann Spencerian magic
Those capital C’s are swoon worthy.
Scrapbook in progress…
A discouraging valentine for my loved one.
Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is rather diabolical…. every now and again I like to throw a curve ball! This is a leaf from a thirteenth century herbal. I am assured by the British Library’s catalogue record that the big fish thing is actually meant to depict a sperm whale, and that the plants are kinds of birthwort. Don’t go taking those glorious high status books for granted now!
Actually don’t let me mislead you. It’s actually a rather glorious book, and very practical with instructions for various salves and treatments, plus helpful illustrations to help the reader recognise plants. However it is fair to admit that the quality of the illustration is rather less than the other books we’ve looked at of late. It is thought to have belonged to the King of Sicily in the thirteenth century.
Image source: British Library MS Egerton 747. Image declared as public domain on the British Library website.
Yes thank you.
Draft #2 Paul Celan