A Wealt Of Free Online Calligraphy Books

[txomsy]

I just became aware of a wonderful resource for historical books on Calligraphy. It contains links to online (and in most cases downloadable) versions of historical copybooks arranged by Century, Country and Date. It is

 

www.pennavolans.com

 

 

Hundreds of books linked to, practically all the great masters, most of their main works are linked there,starting from the beginnings with Italian cursives, the Dutch masters (like Van de Velde) and French that influenced English writing to lead to English Round Hand, and its evolution and branching through the ages, including all US variants, but also its influences in German, French, Italian, Spanish... etc pointed-pen scripts.

 

BTW, I have no affiliation with the site. Just discovered it and got amazed in awe.

[Uncial]

Thank you

[MyPenAndI]

That's a cool find!
Thank you.

[inkstainedruth]

That looks like an awesome website! I've now bookmarked it. Thanks for posting the link!

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[txomsy]

You're welcome. Besides Eleanor Winters' Calligraphy in the Copperplate Style, I have relied to a very large extent on online texts to learn about calligraphy. If I had had access to this site twenty years ago, (well, if the resources had been available as well), I would have enjoyed this hobby a lot more.

 

Besides online and printed books, the other main resource I cherish are manuscripts: master's books are designed to teach an ideal hand. Manuscripts show how real people did actually use it and provide a lesson in humility (when one sees the average -as in non-professional calligrapher- proficiency of yonder) as encouragement (when one sees that real people didn't write as perfect as shown in the book plates either).

[GlenV]

That is really cool stuff there Thank You txomsy

[DrDebG]

Wow! This is really a great resource! I have bookmarked it for now but want to go back and study it in more detail.

[Stompie]

Very nice, Thank you for sharing!

[Astronymus]

Great find - bookmarked.

[neverforget]

amazing, thank you for sharing!

[Anne-Sophie]

Eleanor Winters' Calligraphy in the Copperplate Style, has many upper cases, even lower cases letters forms alternatives.

 

With its guidelines ready to be copied, comprehensive tutorials and many examples, it is the very best book on Copperplate calligraphy.

 

At the beginning of my calligraphic improvement journey, I consulted many of the internet references even bought a thin Dover publishing book about Copperplate, written in the beginning of the 20th century, it was definitely lacking in the letter form instruction, but it is very thin, thus it can be used with a couple of sheets of lined practice paper when traveling.