SUPPLEMENTAL WRITING HANDS
In my opinion, those who aspire to fine handwriting should include their adaptation of the universally familiar humanistic roman writing hands in their repertoire. There will be many occasions when headers or important passages written out in these hands will add dignity and elegance to their renditions.
The humanistic minuscule letterforms originally formulated by Poggio Bracciolini in the early fifteenth century and subsequently refined by scribes throughout that century, are compatible - indeed harmonius - with Italic writing. I particularly admire the Humanistic writing of Mark of Vicenza, late Fifteenth century, PlateXX (pages 402 & 417) - Writing & Illuminating & Lettering (Edward Johnston), for its roundness and evenness.:
References:
- THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANISTIC SCRIPT, B. L. Ullman, ACLS Humanities E-Book, American Council of Learned Societies, New York.
- EXPLICATIO FORMARUM LITTERARUM (The Unfolding of Letterforms), Rutherford Aris, The Calligraphy Connection, St. Paul (1990)
- ROMAN LETTER FORMS (How to Render), Tommy Thompson, Holme Press, (1946)
- WRITING & ILLUMINATING & LETTERING, Edward Johnston, Pitman Publishing (various Publishers), Bath, (1973-various dates)
- LETTERING, Graily Hewitt, Seely, Service & Co. Ltd. (various Publishers), London, (1930-various dates)
![[Roman writing exemplar]](cal72a.jpg)
![[Roman writing exemplar]](cal71.jpg)
![[Roman writing exemplar]](cal72.jpg)
I use classic Capitalis Monumentalis Majuscules with my humanistic minuscule writing as modeled here:
![[Roman lettering exemplar]](cal235s.jpg "Roman lettering exemplar")
This is an exemplar of the CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS letterforms
employed by stone cutters for edifices, monuments,
tombstones, etc. A particularly fine extant example is
found on Trajan's column in Rome and the essential
constructs of these letterforms are the models for all
Majuscule (Capital) alphabets used in the western
world. Stonecutters in particular still employ their
distinctive proportions and terminating serifs. It
should be noted that only twenty letters were used in
the ancient Roman alphabet : A B
C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T V X. Our
modern J and
U were not used, their
equivalents being I and
V respectively. Thus,
our modern JULIUS was
written IVLIVS. The
letter K was seldom used
and then only before A.
The letters Y and
Z were only used when
reproducing Greek words. W was not part of the ancient Roman
alphabet at all. It was Medieval scribes who eventually
formalized the construction models for the letters
J K U W Y Z. Capitalis
Monumentalis lettering is at the apex of the "Hierarchy
of Scripts" for Calligraphers and is often used by them
for headers or versals in pen and ink renditions.
There are numerous excellent photographs of actual CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS lettering (including that on Trajan's column) mostly accompanied by location information, translations and analyses, at Bill Thayer's Latin Inscriptions section of his LacusCurtius web site
![[Roman lettering exemplar]](plnexemp05ss.jpg "Roman lettering exemplar")
In general I follow the classic CAPITALIS MONUMENTALIS letterforms
except as follows: I modify them to produce closer
spacing and this, together with a compaction of the
wide letters C O Q and
M results in more
uniform and "square" lettering. Serifs are small and
unobstrusive -- they can be slight terminal flicks or
added horizontal stabs. I frequently do not apply
serifs in order to enhance speed in rendering.
Letterform features: Capitalis Monumentalis letterforms
are stately and elegant: E and F
have equal length horizontal bars; A has a sharp apex; V has a sharp junction; the bowls of
B P R S are always
nicely formed.
Anyone is granted permission to use content on
this page in accordance with the terms of this Creative
Commons License. Used content should be imprinted
with: Used by permission of James
Pickering - http://jp29.org/