Malcolm Couch

An interesting book. I was half interested because Steve Jobs had dropped out of uni and enrolled in a calligraphy course and later credited this course with some of his creative innovations with Apple. Though I'm not sure that Malcolm Couch has initiated the same creative spark in me. Basically it's a straightforward "how-to" book: how to select the right pens (or make your own from reeds or quills), how to select the right paper, the right ink, but above all how to write in various different calligraphic styles. One thing I learned was that when writers used quill pens, they didn't use them with all the feathers attached...they trimmed off the feathers so that the quill was more or less, the length of a normal pen........maybe a bit longer because they had to keep trimming it to keep a good writing edge.
I liked the tip about spacing: where two curves meet (like two "00s" then you space closely, where a curved line and a vertical come together ....medium space and where two verticals meet, then about double the medium space. Spacing between words ...for capitals it's about equal to a capital "O", and for lower case it's equal to an "n". Oh, and "lower case" is simply derived from letterpress printing where the letters were kept in cases and the lower one was for the smaller letters.
He says the basic Roman monumental script is the basis for all present day alphabets and somewhere I have (or had) a whole book on deriving the Roman letters......quite a lot of geometry involved....though Couch down-plays the geometry of scripts. But he does include full sets of alphabets (including stroke order) for: Roman,(serif and sans serif), Rustic, Uncials, Half Uncials,Gothic black letter, Italic, Swash italic, Versals, Lombardic initials, and, the slightly more modern, Foundational hand. Though to my eye and knowledge, most of these fonts are rather old fashioned.Certainly, with the advances in graphics enabled by computers the number of scripts available has exploded. And today, one does not have to be a great penman(penwoman) to be able to produce great calligraphy on a computer. However, I guess, that calligraphy will survive as a craft/art form for a long while.....though you will not pick up the more imaginative and creative work that is being produced by calligraphers from Crouch's book. I give it 2.5 stars.… (mehr)