Penmanship

History

Latin penmanship

Latin penmanship is associated with the history of the writing in Europe before the use of the Imprimerie and on the basis of the Latin alphabet of the Romans. The practice of the manual copy pushed to practice the writing like an art by often associating with it the Enluminure or the illustration. Gradually were born from new letters (the V and the J ), spaces between the words and the need for Majuscule S and the punctuation.

The practice of Latin penmanship is generally associated with the copy of manuscripts by the Moine S Christians. For them, it was about much more than one work: it was a form of prayer, which was at the same time a praise and an asceticism, an occult art.

Then, with the wire of the history, it evolved/moved with the liking of the cultural influences and the technical innovations. According to the support used (stone, wax, papyrus, parchment and sheet), it is practiced with a chisel, a style, a Calame or a feather (feather of bird, then metal feather). The Latin alphabet of the beginnings gave rise to a multitude of alternatives of which:

Roman writings:

Capital, Rustica, Uncial, Quadrata, Semi-uncial;

the writings islander (Celtic);
the writings Caroline then Gothic primitive;
Gothic scripts:

Textured, Majuscules, Capitales lombardes, English Bâtarde and Flemish Bâtarde, Fraktur, Schwabacher, cursive;

humanistic writings:

Rotunda, Capital, Chancelière (/cancelleresca,/écriture of chancellery, also called for “Italic” printing works);

English writings.
the gestural one (current penmanship practiced with tools diverted like the scribing tool, the folded-PEN…)

The Latin penmanship of the copyists suffered much with the arrival from the Imprimerie and the press from Gutenberg, but it continued to be taught at the school until the middle of the 20th century with the writing with the feather, its full and its untied, on the basis of English simplified.

The ball point pen then the word processing made it disappear from the everyday life, but it remains the place of a graphic research more than active today, with the appearance of new styles, like the “gestural one” and the use of mixed techniques. Let us note that if it is détrônée by the Typographie, large provider of news police forces of writing, it is often used as inspiration with this one, which creates police forces imitating manual penmanship (let us quote the police force shock of Roger Excoffon, inspired by the blows of brush of Eastern penmanship or the police force zapfino , inspired by the writing “to the feather”, works of the typographer Hermann Zapf).

Blow, it is present everywhere around us, in publicity, the logos, the labels of products, the envelopes ( postal Art ), etc

Chinese penmanship

The tradition wants that the Chinese characters were invented by Cang Jie (~2650). Its compositions were founded on the observation of nature, this is why it was said that it had two pairs of eyes… but it is most probably a legend. Another tradition makes go up the invention of the characters with Fuxi, legendary the first emperor.

Chinese penmanship is the base of Chinese art to the modern direction of the term, the visual beauty of the ideograms, the technique on which it is based and the plastic stakes which are dependant there incarnate the whole of the precepts Métaphysique S of the Chinese culture. It became a major art.

It is well later, in a completely independent way, that developed in Occident the art of penmanship. In Europe, during all the the Middle Ages, it was almost exclusively reserved for the Moine S copyists. Thereafter, he was taught with all in the form of writing with the feather with the full ones and untied.

During the same period, Islamic art will create a penmanship specific to its form of writing and will make of it an element of the decorations in architecture as on usual objects.

With the appearance of the Printing works then Word processing, penmanship was gradually replaced by the art of the Typographie, which made available the typographical categories inseparable from penmanship itself. In addition, of the calligraphers as Mediavilla gave again with penmanship its istic vocation Art.

Far-Eastern penmanship

The Chinese writing is a direct transcription of the thought without the intermediary of the sounds. All the words are monosyllabic, each sign represents an idea and the written language can be read in all the languages of the China. If the codified graphic language has existed for 4000 years, the ideograms of the Chinese traditional language have existed for almost 3000 years (6th century before Jesus-Christ) and it is towards 210 before Jesus-Christ that Li was declared: “ In the writing of a character it is not only the composition which imports, it is also the force of the blow of brush. Made that your feature dances like the cloud in the sky, sometimes heavy, sometimes light. It is only whereas you impregnate your spirit of what you made and who you will arrive at the truth .”

Penmanship is the form of the art most characteristic of the Chinese cultural surface, and the traditional styles of paintings of it result directly. It is at the origin even of art to the Western direction of the term, plastic creation being indissociable utility aimings of the writing, because penmanship belongs to the writing.

The calligraphic technique of Chinese origin requires the use of the “Four treasures of the well-read man”:

the Brush Chinese;
the Paper, called by " error; of riz" ;
the stick of Ink;
stone to crush ink.

The art of penmanship, in the Buddhism Chan, is connected with the meditation transcendantale.

Just like the Chinese Painting, Chinese penmanship is distinguished basically from penmanship or painting Western, being given the carnal role of the breath in the creative process; no " repentir" or correction, no addition are allowed by the use of the Indian ink, which gives a univocal temporal dimension specific to the layout.

Moreover, the nonphonetic nature of the Sinogramme S involves a quasi infinite graphic repertory (10 516 characters are indexed into 121 and more than 40.000 are it in the edition of 1717), because the Imprimerie, of Chinese origin, far from slowing down the use of the brush, contributed to the diffusion of the calligraphic repertories of styles and their practice. All this mainly explains equivalence between writing and art in China.

Arab penmanship

See also: Arab calligraphic Styles

The use of the writing as an art is one of the components most characteristic of the arts of Islam.

Arabic is the language of the Koranic revelation for the Islamic religion. This language very quickly diffuses in all the Islamic world, during the Moslem conquest. The writing makes in the same way, since very early, the Coran is recopied, and the writing becomes one of the principal means of diffusion of the religious message. If the language is at the same time a liturgical tool, of communication and transmission of knowing, the writing thus has, in parallel, triple function: decorative nun, utility and. The writing varies according to the nature and the destination of the writings and the supports.

One counts many calligraphic styles, divided into two main categories: the kufique one, with the angular characters, which is born very early with the writing hijazi from first Corans and develops, both in Egypt and in Iran and the cursive one, with the untied characters. These two great types vary enormously, according to the country and the time when they are employed. One can quote for example, for angular penmanships, the kufique one braided, where the poles mix, or the kufique one animated, whose letters end in human faces and animals. In the cursive ones, one distinguishes six canonical styles in general:

the naskhî , one of the first to be developed, rapid and readable, very much used in the Arab world. One of its alternatives, the maghribî, is used out of Al-Andalus and in the Maghreb;
the muhaqqaq , in favor under the Mamelukes, leaning towards the left;
the thuluth , also very much used at the period mamelouke in Egypt, which is characterized by the height of the poles;
the rayhânî ;
the riqâ' , near to the thuluth, which is useful only in administrative documents;
the tawqî' , by the way which one can make the same remark.

For the foreign languages with Arabic (Persan, Turkish, Berber, Urdu, Croatian or Swahili), other styles develop, like the nasta' lîq, inclined writing, mixture of the naskhî and the ta' lîq, which is useful in particular in the Persan manuscripts. The variation in a vast corpus of penmanships does not prevent a unit seldom present in the remainder of Islamic art: the writing is thus a strong symbol of unification and distinction, which leads sometimes to the creation of pseudo-penmanships, illegible, but strong markers of an Islamic identity.

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