Calligrams

Our monthly meeting in Epsom on tuesday will be about calligrams, and if you want to know more more here is a definition, noun, a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves.

Hilary Lewis who is teaching the class has found some images on the web that may be helpful, at least a jumping off place. You will need your usual calligraphy gear remember your parallel pens or the pens you usually like to work with and a practice pad like Zeta.

Christopher Haanes

Time to sign up for this workshop with

Christopher Haanes.

Christopher is a very highly regarded calligrapher and teacher and we are so lucky that he is able to visit us briefly before heading off to Australia where he will conduct several workshops before heading back home to Norway.

Italic might be the hand that is the most varied of all the scripts. One may ask if there really is a neutral italic. There is much variation even amongst Renaissance scribes, and there is a multitude of modern adaptations, stretching from formal, almost typographic styles to highly individual possibilities.

Advanced techniques like pressure variation, pen angle, manipulation, building-up, and retouching will be explored, as long as the student is ready to embrace them. The workshop will include lectures and demonstrations concerning the history of letters, the relationship between the printed and the written word, and technical solutions.

Skill level: Intermediate (students who can write an italic hand)  -  Advanced students.

A video showing Christopher writing latin letters. Here is his website if you wish more information click here.

A deposit of $120 is to be paid by the end of August with the final payment of a further $120 to be made by the 20th September. Direct payments can be made to:  010288-0137566-00  (NZ Calligraphers ANZ Newmarket). Please include your name and C Haanes in the appropriate  columns.

Date:- 5th and 6th October. Time 9.30am - 4pm. Venue is upstairs at 48 Windmill Road, Epsom. Please bring your lunch. Tea, coffee and juice will be provided.

Workshop participants practise sheets, thank you for sharing.

Peter Gilderdale was our leader for this workshop. A quiet but intense weekend that demanded concentration and the need for us to revisit our analysis skills. We were given several (12th-15th century) excerpts  of cursive every day hands (in latin) to decipher, then we were to develop them into useful useful, readable  hands we could use today.

We just started to find some sort of familiarity when the next alphabet was handed out. Peter was very willing to demonstrate, and was constantly circulating the room to assist with deciphering, and offering helpful suggestions for each one of our problems. 

The calligraphers from Warkworth joined us for the first day of the workshop, our other two travellers were in Auckland for the weekend. Bevan had travelled from Whangarei and Peggy had flown up from Wellington, it was good to see them all again.

Peter showed us how to write one of his favourite letters - 'e'. He covered ground on the basics:- pen grasp, tools, writing positions, hand, arm, shoulder movements and I was reminded how easy it was to let lazy habits take hold.

The last assignment was wicked and playful to arrive in the very last half hour of the weekend, we stared at an extremely intricate document full of cadells, fine decorative pen work and letters made up of oblique squares with the edge of the pen. 

Peter then asked us to select the 3 hands we liked best, all went round and listened to the discussion that followed and the reasons for our choices. Evidence that some of us were still standing. An excellent workshop.

More workshop practise sheets.