Contemporary calligraphy: Modern scribes and lettering artists II

by Peter Halliday (Introduction)

Book by

168 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book illustrates a great variety of beautiful lettering and handwriting for many different uses ranging from cards to signs to book art. Some of the lettering is only part of the art, as in the work of Marie Angel or Stan Knight, to give but two examples. Many pieces are in italic; this is a good complement to Sweet Roman Hand. "Contemporary" is relative. I think all the work was done before 1986, making this no longer up-to-date for someone searching the world for the best calligraphers and letterers.

This book is not only for those who write an italic hand but also for anyone interested in typography (font designers like Goudy, Gill and Zapf were also penmen) or in Chinese brush letters, which at their frequent best are individual, and serried, action paintings.

The cover has a line from Wassily Kandinsky "Letters act as practical and useful signs, but also as a pure form of inner melody."