A page from a copybook, referred to as a “calligraphic and computing instruction manual,” that was created by American schoolmaster Thomas Earl, 1740–41.The Newberry Library, Gift of Susan and Rudy Wunderlich, 1998 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Round hand was not an imitation of the fine lines produced by the engraver’s burin, although some modern writers have made that assertion. With few exceptions, engraving was considered a reproductive (as opposed to a creative) art in the 17th and 18th century. Prominent engravers such as John Sturt and George Bickham pointed out that engraving was no match for the pen in freedom or beauty and that the engraver depended on written copy.
Although English writing books continued to include other scripts such as black letter (which they called “German text”), various secretary hands, a slender, delicate “Italian” hand recommended for women, and a rather idiosyncratic hand used for law court records, round hand occupied most of their pages. By about 1725, it was the principal commercial and decorative hand. By mid-century most books showed only round hand and a few varieties of the German text hand; Roman capitals and minuscules were included mainly as display alphabets in titles and text headings. Command of hand was limited to decorating display alphabets or finishing off short lines of writing, and pen-made calligraphic pictures faded from the scene. By this time, flourishing was considered frivolous and unnecessary in business, for which the chief and singular virtue of penmanship was legibility. By the end of the century, writing books from Europe and the United States shifted their focus away from calligraphic qualities and toward the ideal of a legible and easy-to-learn hand.
A page from a copybook, referred to as a “calligraphic and computing instruction manual,” that was created by American schoolmaster Thomas Earl, 1740–41.The Newberry Library, Gift of Susan and Rudy Wunderlich, 1998 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
By the end of the 18th century, as shown in The Art of Writing (1791) by the American John Jenkins, letters were reduced to a few simple, interchangeable parts. Legible penmanship became the overriding consideration, and methods of handwriting based on arm movement appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. (This approach was a major break from the earlier practice of making letters by using the fingers and wrist.) In the early 19th century straightforward “systematic writing” became the instructional norm.
With the perfection and mass production of the flexible metal pointed pen in the 1820s, calligraphy experienced a slight revival through the efforts of people such as the American Oliver B. Goldsmith, who was an early and strong advocate for the use of metal pens for writing and decoration. His Goldsmith’s Gems of Penmanship (1844) presents only examples written with metal pens, and it includes flourishes that evoke those in late-17th-century English copybooks. Goldsmith’s Gems is significant for two other reasons: it was among the first American books to use lithography for the reproduction of writing, and it was the first American copybook to describe a writing style as “copperplate.” Lithography and electrotyping (a relief process involving photoengraving) would replace engraving as a means of preparing writing books during the last half of the century. Flourishes and calligraphic drawings would continue to grace their title pages, primarily to attract buyers rather than to teach the styles. As Charles P. Zaner wrote in Zaner’s Gems of Flourishing (1888): “If you are a teacher of penmanship, much of your success depends, in many instances, upon your ability to flourish, as there is no one thing so easily and quickly made that will attract as much attention as a skillfully executed flourish.” Decorative alphabets and calligraphic images of plants and animals (especially birds) were produced in abundance in the last quarter of the century, but their quality was uniform and mechanical rather than individual and artistic. By the time the typewriter was introduced, in about 1870, writing professions were declining in visibility and prestige.
copperplate calligraphyCopperplate calligraphy.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Revival of calligraphy (19th and 20th centuries)
The revival of calligraphy in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century was part of a broader artistic reaction against the mechanization of manual crafts. About 1870 the English author, socialist, and artist William Morris turned his attention to the ancient practices of scribes and began to experiment with writing. Using quills, he wrote out and illuminated several manuscripts on parchment and paper; he later became interested in printing, and he established the Kelmscott Press in 1891. His inquiries into calligraphy and his patronage of the book arts induced paper and parchment makers, among others, to revive forgotten manufacturing standards, and his study and collection of manuscripts inspired others to pursue calligraphy.
“Praise of Venus” from A Book of Verse by William Morris, 1870; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Among those who were indirectly inspired by Morris’s activities was the British calligrapher Edward Johnston, who explored medieval and Renaissance techniques and materials relating to manuscript preparation and writing. Starting with a version of half uncial, Johnston eventually settled on a 10th-century version of English Carolingian as a basic, or “foundational,” hand from which other calligraphic styles could be developed. He became an influential teacher of a generation of type designers and calligraphers; his Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (1906), was a landmark work for the modern revival of calligraphy.
Manuscript copy sheet by Edward Johnston, 1918; in the Newberry Library, Chicago.Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago, the Wing Collection
A calligraphic renaissance had already begun in Austria and Germany by then, through the efforts of the Austrian royal archivist Rudolf von Larisch, who lectured on lettering and typography in Vienna, and the type designer Rudolf Koch in Offenbach, Ger. The Germanic approaches to calligraphy in the early 20th century were quite distinct from English revivalism, especially in the German writers’ inclination to seek inspiration in writing materials. In 1905 von Larisch introduced the concept of the “language of materials” (Materialsprache) as applied to writing (Unterricht in ornamentaler Schrift; “Instruction in Ornamental Writing”). He examined the way letters were made with a variety of tools and, conversely, the effects the tools had on the letters. Von Larisch developed modern alphabets that emphasized the figure-ground relation between the letter and the writing surface. Rudolf Koch, who spent most of his working life at the Klingspor type foundry, used historic models as a springboard for his modernistic calligraphic and typographic inventions. His writing ranged from formal styles to densely massed blocks of black-letter text enlivened with bold, colourful initials. Like Johnston, Koch was a devoted and influential teacher.