The Beauty of Calligraphy

Posted by Andy Li on September 21, 2009

From the start of the civilization, writing styles have been greatly developed, including tools and materials. During the prehistoric period, stones and sticks were used as tools to clay tablets for cave paintings. And there were reed pens for writing on papyrus, quill pens for parchment, which are similar to metal pens and ball pens in nowadays.

Young people today seldom use the old writing styles. However, they would still produce Maori Rock Drawings which can be made well on small copper circles or copper enamel ash trays.

Nowadays, the art of calligraphy is commonly incorporated in advertising and designing. With the creativity of our modern artists, calligraphy is no longer seen only on papers, but also on other surfaces like fabrics, glass, ceramics, etc. 3D-designs are another commonly used technique as well.

As modern artists are often exposed to a more diverse world than the artists in the previous decades, the rich personal experience of modern calligraphers can often give them great inspiration. With this creativity, the art of calligraphy is brought to a new height and sees no boundaries.

Calligraphy appears on both functional hand lettered inscriptions and fine art designs. On these designs, the clarity of the letters are replaced by abstract handwritten marks which are difficult to read.

Besides those artworks that you might only be able to see in exhibitions, the art of calligraphy can be found in our daily lives as well. For examples, calligraphy often plays a very important role in making invitation cards for different events and making other memorial documents. Advertising and graphic designing utilizes calligraphy a lot as well.

Literally, calligraphy means beautiful writing. It was the method to produce a book in 500 yeas ago, when the invention of the printing press wasn’t developed. Each copy of the reading materials was handwritten by scribe working in a scriptorium. Quill and ink were used to write on materials like vellum and parchment.

There are three main types of calligraphy in today’s society, that’s the Western or Roman, Arabic and Chinese or Oriental.