The art of beautiful writing is well defined by this following quote from an unknown author. “Geometry can produce legible letters, but Art alone makes them beautiful. Art begins where Geometry ends, imparts to letters a character transcending mere measurement.â€
Making marks to convey information (the original reason writing was invented) can be boring. It may be that the art of calligraphy was invented by scribes to relieve the boredom of hours spent hours transcribing information. They found that pressing down or letting up on the quill pen point produced varying thicknesses in the line; or a slight change of angle gave a letter distinctive character, or that sliding over the wet ink with the corner of a quill produced a sensitive hairline. The scribes found pleasure in making their work more beautiful and interesting to look at.
   The invention of printing with moveable type had a huge effect on society. The humble scribe was one of the first casualties of this invention. However, letters still had to be written, documents compiled, and charters prepared. It took another 400 years before the activities of the scribe became obsolete with the invention of the typewriter at the end of the 19th century.
Calligraphy hit its lowest point at this time – but this is also the period when realization of the skills that had been lost began to resurface
In Victorian England, the industrial revolution brought about a nostalgic reaction; people
looked back to what they saw as a golden age, unpolluted by noisy, smelly factories. The
Arts and Crafts movement encouraged the art of beautiful writing done by hand.
The father of the English calligraphy revival was Edward Johnston (1872-1944). He was training to become a doctor, but due to his health had to give up his practice. From then until his death, he decided to devote himself to the craft of calligraphy. His friends in the Arts and Crafts movement encouraged and supported him by asking him to teach a class in calligraphy in 1899. At that time Johnston himself was still teaching himself by research and experiment, so he adopted the attitude of asking his students to share in his work. Together they made pioneering discoveries in the lost art.
Why is Johnston’s work so significant? During the 19th century calligraphers had been drawing Gothic letters with a pointed steel nib and carefully filling them in. Masons cut Gothic letters and signwriters painted them. Johnston realized that the shape and form of a thing must come directly from what is used to make it. In other words, the pressure ancient scribes put on the quill pen or soft-hair brush gave calligraphic letters their distinctive look, and the individual style of each scribe created unique beauty in his lettering. Johnston harnessed the knowledge of the past to create a new future for the art of calligraphy.
It is now over 100 years since Johnston made his first experiments in calligraphy. Unlike most art movements, Calligraphy remains alive and well. In fact, the last 30 years have seen a dramatic increase in books and periodicals about calligraphy. Why is this?
It may be because calligraphers realized that calligraphy had the potential to be more than just a craft, and this knowledge opened up new horizons. Not all calligraphy is art, but the potential for art exists within it. Many calligraphic pieces now being produced incorporate painting techniques and, indeed, some works become paintings that can hold their own in galleries. Legibility is no longer a must; for many calligraphers the idea is to produce something beautiful to look at using letterforms. Calligraphy as it exists now is like playing upon a very fine instrument to produce visual music.
The art of writing has evolved from “making marks to convey information†to making marks that are beautiful and exciting to look at.
By Kay Sluterbeck, AAPJ Educational Columnist