STUDYING WESTERN CALLIGRAPHY FROM THE SOURCES. Each course can be developed in a weekend or three days course.

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1 STUDYING WESTERN CALLIGRAPHY FROM THE SOURCES. Each course can be developed in a weekend or three days course. 1- Carolingian and Rustic Capitals: Manuscript 246 the Garioponti Practica Medicinalis, written in a beautiful carolingian, with headings in rustic capitals. XII century. This manuscript is written with a excellent hand, strong forms, good spacing and the use of some uncial influences which give the hand a very distinctive character. The rustic capital headings are extremely well executed, showing the use of sound rhythm in the spacing of letters and, thanks to the frequent repetition of words, a free interpretation with less concern in legibility and more in the overall design. Students will copy a whole historical page, and will learn the hand, line spacing and page design. This course can be divided in two parts, one to study the carolingian minuscule and one to study the rustic capitals. Students who came to Italy in 2007 saw this manuscript, but we didn t study it in depth. Since I cannot bring with me the original manuscripts, I have taken photos of the whole books and will give several photocopies to students at original size and in enlargements.

2 2- Gothic Rotunda: Manuscript 320 Breviario Camaldolese, rotunda gothic, XV century and the Verini rotunda gothic geometrical drawings. XV century. This manuscript shows a very classical use of the gothic page design, but with the very legible and generous rotunda gothic. Letters are very well formed, but the overall feeling is not static: the handwritten forms are very lively and the movement makes them dance on the page. In this course students study the hand and the page design of gothic manuscripts, as well. Students complete a page in rotunda gothic (in a three days workshop).

3 3- Italic hands XVI-XVII and XVIII century correspondence in a multiplicity of italic and italic influenced hands. Students will study the historical Italics, study a variety of personal historical hands and develop their own contemporary hand. Over the years I have collected a large amount of handwritten Italic correspondence, so in this course it is possible to study the infinite possibilities of personalization of one's own Italic hand through the numerous examples, keeping the handwriting quality of freshness, speed and informality. This course follows the lessons of my correspondence course and the book Freehandwriting. Students complete a box with several small booklets, each with a different italic hand. (final projects are possible only if the course is three days. With two days we cn study the hands only).

4 CALLIGRAPHIC ARTIST BOOKS: text/book/binding This is the program that I have been teaching in design Universities and cultural associations for many years. Over the time the program has developed and is now an all encompassing experience from text content to the development of a hand to the making of the book. In the course I encourage students to look beyond calligraphy and embrace all possibilities of marks making and their expressive potential. Students develop their own hands from the study of the text which they are going to write and the emotions which they want to convey in visualizing such text. The results are always amazing and unexpected. The process for developing the new hand takes inspiration both from the visualization of emotions and from samples of writings from many different cultures (including Arabic writings, Indian writings and many western lesser known hands). The course is similar to the one I gave at the Books by Hand in 2007, but I have added the concept to it, so it totally fits now the artist book category. This course can be divided in two weekends, one for concept and hand development, the other for book design and bookbinding. It can also be developed in a week long course or three weekends, depending on the extention we want to give. If you need to develop it in one weekend only, then we need to do only the hand development, without the book.

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