Caligrafia Espanola - Hi Res Scans - 19Th Cent. - Broad Edge Nib

[Columba Livia]

In the 16th century the angular Chancery hand which developed in Italy (often referred to today under the generic name of Italic) was, in Spain, made more rounded (under the influence of the Redondilla mercantile hand?) and so a new b=astard hand: the Spanish, was begotten. This hand continued to be used into the 20th century (I believe) alongside Inglesa/English Roundhand.

I have scanned this set of plates, printed from steel engravings, of D. Juan Folguera y Plandolit's calligraphy, which I think accompanied a book written by him. They were published in 1853, according to the wrapper they came in.

In plate 1, the slant is 60 or 61 degrees and the angle of the nib 35 degrees. The height of the minuscules is approx. 8mm and the caps. 16mm. When writing this hand, the paper is tilted to the left so that it is parallel with your arm as you may see below. This hand was written with a straight cut broad edged nib and today you could use a Wm. Mitchell Round-Hand pen, for example.

Hi-res Scans are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21860485@N06/sets/

 

These are long out of copyright, so they are to free to use for whatever you want. They are copyright free.

 

Some smaller images:

http://i.imgur.com/JEdemXwh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4EZx6UUh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UPC78EIh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RSu1Ak0h.jpg

Here is an original example of this style of writing, written by the Spanish calligrapher Vicente Valliciergo

http://i.imgur.com/chwyEVs.jpg

That example is from this useful and interesting blog which has much on calligraphy and Spanish calligraphy:

http://bibliotypes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/la-caligrafia-espanola-en-el-siglo-xix.html

From the same blog, these images from other Spanish calligraphy books show posture and how to hold the pen for writing this hand (the hold on the left in the case of the 2nd image, the one on the right being for English Roundhand).

http://i.imgur.com/b3Jpoqv.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iKVKc1R.jpg

Edited September 17, 2013 by Columba Livia

[MisterBoll]

Gracias. Muy interesante.

[mvarela]

That's beautiful, Columba Livia, thanks for sharing!

[thang1thang2]

While imgur is an excellent image sharing service for most things. If you want high quality, it is not the place. Imgur highly compresses all images. If you want the scans to be high resolution and perfect quality, I would suggest something more traditional like photobucket.

 

That being said, these are excellent.

[Columba Livia]

While imgur is an excellent image sharing service for most things. If you want high quality, it is not the place. Imgur highly compresses all images. If you want the scans to be high resolution and perfect quality, I would suggest something more traditional like photobucket.

 

That being said, these are excellent.

 

Ah, thx. I didn't realize that imgur did that. They are on flickr now:

 

 

And the quality is better there than on imgur.

[HDoug]

Fascinating! I've never seen examples of this script before.

 

Thanks for posting.

 

Doug

[smk]

The page by Vicente Valliciergo is just beautiful and makes a better case for this style of writing than the exemplars. This is definitely worth learning - love the majuscule Q.

 

Salman

[brunico]

Thank you, Columba Livia - very interesting post and links!

 

[dms525]

Very nice script. Thank you for sharing this, Columba Livia.

 

David