We return to our facsimile of a 16th-cnetury calligraphic manuscript, Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta, or Model Book of Calligraphy, written in 1561/62 by Georg Bocskay, the Croatian-born court secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, and illuminated 30 years later by Flemish painter Joris Hoefnagel for the grandson of Ferdinand I, Emperor Rudolph II. The manuscript was produced by Bocskay in Vienna to demonstrate his technical mastery of the immense range of writing styles known to him. To complement and augment Bocskay's calligraphy, Hoefnagel added fruit, flowers, and insects to nearly every page, composing them so as to enhance the unity and balance of the page’s design. Although the two never met, the manuscript has an uncanny quality of collaboration about it.
Our facsimile was the first facsimile produced from the collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It was printed in Lausanne, Switzerland by Imprimeries Reunies and published by Christopher Hudson in 1992.
View another post from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta,
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Reading “The Rising Gorge” by S.J.Perelman last night. I’ll admit to only buying it for the fine cover illustration by the wonderful Ben Shahn but, after hearing Dylan Moran liked Perelman’s writing, I thought I’d give it a crack. There’s some lovely wordplay (I can see why Moran reads him) but I’m not yet captivated by what I’ve read so far. The 1961 edition is a beautifully bound and designed book in and of itself. Deckled page edges, cloth spine with two colour text and an interesting choice of typefaces... so much so that I doodled some of the characters (the paper was far too eager to bleed my fountain pen though!).
Sometimes, things in our collection still surprise me, even after 29 years. From our fairly sizable manuscript facsimile collection, I was surprised I had never encountered this little (5 X 7 in.) reproduction of a 16th-cnetury calligraphic manuscript, Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta, the first facsimile produced from the collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, printed in Lausanne, Switzerland by Imprimeries Reunies and published by Christopher Hudson in 1992.
As the relatively new invention of printing came to dominate the production of books by the 1500s, the calligraphic inventiveness of scribes became prized for their aesthetic qualities rather than their production value.
From 1561 to 1562, Georg Bocskay, the Croatian-born court secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created this Model Book of Calligraphy in Vienna to demonstrate his technical mastery of the immense range of writing styles known to him. About thirty years later, Emperor Rudolph II, Ferdinand's grandson, commissioned the [Flemish painter] Joris Hoefnagel to illuminate Bocskay's model book. Hoefnagel added fruit, flowers, and insects to nearly every page, composing them so as to enhance the unity and balance of the page's design. -- Getty Museum Collection webpage.
Although the two never met, the manuscript has an uncanny quality of collaboration about it.
Today we only show 11 pages from the facsimile, but we hope to present more from this highly-inventive manuscript of calligraphic virtuosity in the future.
This week we present all twelve plates in the undated calligraphic alphabet portfolio Alphabete by the German calligrapher and type designer Hans Kühne (1910-1961).The translation of the full title reads Alphabets for Writers, Printers, Painters, Draftsmen, Artisans and Those Who Enjoy Beautiful Writing. Kühne was a student of the great German calligrapher and type designer Rudolf Koch (1876-1934). This portfolio was published in Hamburg by the “Rudolf Koch Circle” in association with Bärenreiter-Verlag in Kassel and Basel, and displays a distinct relationship to Koch’s approach to design.
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The upper and lower case letters we are used to today, along with spaces between words, punctuation, and enlarged initial letters, were a development of the late 8th century known as the Carolingian Minuscule. This manuscript hand not only established a uniform book hand that would be used throughout Charlemagne’s sprawling empire, but it also established the kinds of letter forms that would serve as the models for every Western typographic design to our current day. Today, we essentially read and write in the Carolingian Minuscule.
The Carolingian Minuscule itself developed from the insular uncial scripts and partly from the Roman half uncial that were used at Irish and Anglo-Celtic monasteries that had been founded all over Europe by the late 6th century. The insular monks who founded these monasteries also brought the traditions of word spacing, punctuation, and initial letters with them to the continent. The uncial scripts themselves derived from the late imperial Rustic Capitals, which themselves seem to have been based on Roman epigraphic letter forms.
The main characteristic of the miniscule is the breaking of the x-height with large capital letters and the characteristic ascenders and descenders found in such letters as b, d, f, g, h, k, l, p, q, t, and the rounding of capital letters into forms we know as “lower case” today, such as a, e, i, m, n. The precursors to these can be seen clearly in the first set of examples of the Irish half uncial from our facsimile copy of the Book of Kells (Luzern: Faksimile Verlag, 1990) and the Anglo-Celtic uncial form found in our facsimile copy of the Lindisfarne Gospels (second to last image; Olten and Lausanne, Switzerland: Urs Graf, 1956-60). The original manuscripts were produced at the monasteries of Iona in about 800 CE, and Lindisfarne around 725 CE, respectively. The difference between these and the Carolingian Minuscule is that the letter forms in these manuscripts are all majuscules, i.e., formal capital letters, not the informal miniscule hand that we associate with “lower-case” letters today.
The last example is that of the Roman half uncial, a majuscule hand, also used by Anglo-Celtic scribes on the continent. This example is from our facsimile copy of the Lorsch Gospels ( New York: George Braziller, 1967), a Carolingian manuscript originally produced at Aachen around 810 CE. Here, no spacing between words or punctuation can be seen.
It is said that Charlemagne tasked his main Anglo-Celtic scholar Alcuin of York with devising a new, uniform, manuscript book hand. Alcuin, but more likely others, turned to the informal versions of the uncial letter forms they were familiar with and the Carolingian Minuscule was born! With, of course, profound implications for how we read and write today.
View our post on the early use of the Carolingian Minuscule.
Born in in Ohio, American-Israeli calligrapher, designer, and artist David Moss began his calligraphy career in 1968 and is credited with the contemporary revival of the hand-illuminated ketubah. Moss also works as a book artist in both fine-press editions and handmade books, and he completed his famous Moss Haggadah in 1984, an illuminated manuscript done in the traditional manner on vellum. This manuscript has been reproduced in different versions by his American publisher Bet Alpha Editions in Berkeley, California. In all his productions, Moss’s approach to the Hebrew letter form is shaped by the character of the content, from the loose and lyrical flow of the Song of Songs and the somber square letters of Lamentations to the ritual monumentality of the haggadah and the individuality of each ketubah. The examples shown here are from:
Solomon's Song of Songs, with a new English translation by Yoni Moss, six etchings by Zely Smekhov, and Hebrew calligraphy by David Moss, letterpress printed on handmade paper and published in 1999 by Bet Alpha Editions in Berkeley, California, in an edition of 100 copies. (Images 2 & 3)
Ekhah [Lamentations], with wood engravings by Leonid Gorban and Hebrew calligraphy by Daṿid Moss, letterpress printed on handmade paper in an edition of 120 copies by Bet Alpha Editions in 1997. (Images 4 & 5)
The Moss Haggadah: A Complete Reproduction of the Haggadah Written and Illuminated by David Moss for Richard and Beatrice Levy, third edition, published by Bet Alpha Editions in 2000. (Images 6 & 7)
Love Letters: A Celebration of Jewish Love and Marriage in Words and Images by David Moss, published by Bet Alpha Editions in 2004. (Images 1 & 8-10)
With the possible exception of Louis XIV’s Romain du Roi and the uses of digital technology today, nearly all Western typography is based on either the manuscript hand or Roman epigraphy. Typographers have long looked to both historical or contemporaneous calligraphic hands as models and inspiration for new typeface designs. Writing manuals such as the Spanish example shown here, and the products of students who were trained in these kinds of systems, were very useful for the designer of type. In the 20th century, much of the innovation in typography came from the calligraphic work of such masters as Edward Johnston, Eric Gill, Rudolf Koch, and Hermann Zapf.
This manual is the second edition of Arte de escribir por reglas y con muestras by the noted Spanish calligrapher Torquato Torio de la Riva y Herrero, published in Madrid by the widow of Joaquin Ibarra in 1802. You might recognize some of these letters as we used them in a post to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day this year.
