Volume 12, Number 2 $8.50 ARTISTS’ BOOKSbBOOKBINDINGbPAPERCRAFTbCALLIGRAPHY Volume 12, Number 2, February 2015. 3 Creating Double-Stroke Letterforms by Martin Jackson 8 Dancing Letters Scholarship Fund 12 Creating a Scroll-Tip Pilot Parallel Pen by Carol DuBosch 14 Between Verse and Vision by Risa Gettler 22 Heraldry for Calligraphy by Helen Scholes 28 Spinning Letters by Judy Black, Susan Gunter, and Marilyn Rice 30 A Passionate Gallery 37 New Tools & Materials 38 Passionate Pen Envelopes 40 Leporello Accordion Book by Carol DuBosch 42 Contributors / credits 47 Subscription information A Few Excerpts from the Now Intergalactic Song Fest and Cosmic Miscelany. 2014. Risa Gettler. Hand- lettered and illustrated manuscript book of nineteen poems by John S. Tumlin. 40 pages, images and text on recto pages only. Leather binding is by Edna Wright. Each page is held in an open-front sleeve that is sewn into the binding. The front of the sleeve serves as a frame for its book page (which can be removed). 22" x 13" x 4". Photo by Risa Gettler. “Between Verse and Vision,” page 14. Bound & Lettered b Spring 2015 1 All calligraphy shown in this article is by the author. CREATING DOUBLE-STROKE LETTERFORMS BY MARTIN JACKSON There are two methods to create double-stroke letterforms. One is to use a scroll (or split) nib or pen. These are made to automatically produce double strokes – the pen/nib does it for you. A variety of writing instruments offer scroll versions: Mitchell makes six differ- ent scroll dip pen nibs, Manuscript offers two different scroll nibs (Scroll 4 and Scroll 6) for some of its fountain pens, and four of the Automatic pens have split nibs (numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10). There are also scroll markers, but to make your own split-tip marker, just cut a notch out of the nib of a regular chisel marker. The newest scroll tool is a modified Pilot Parallel Pen(see Carol DuBosch’s article on page 12). The second method, which I’ve taught in workshops, is to use regular nibs, such as Brause, Mitchell, or Speedball, and create a “double style” by writing two separate strokes. This method allows you to decide which strokes need to be doubled and which should remain single strokes. Sometimes what you leave out is more important than what you put in – not every stroke needs to be doubled. Generally, only the thick strokes are doubled. Bound & Lettered b Spring 2015 3 Wendy Fung’s pieces from Amity Park’s class, displayed at “Show & Share” on the last day of Legacies. DANCING LETTERS SCHOLARSHIP FUND This past year, the Dancing Letters Scholarship Fund (DLSF) was a “Reggie Year”), as well as for Camp Cheerio Calligraphy Retreats, thrilled to be able to offer five people full or partial scholarships to Literally Letters at Ghost Ranch, and similar programs. Application Legacies II, the 33rd International Lettering Arts Conference held information is available on the scholarship website. If you know of a in the Dallas area this past summer: Nick Anderson, Wendy Fung, possible recipient, we welcome suggestions of candidates. Carol Scott, Oona Tully, and Wendy Carnegie. To continue offering these scholarships, the Dancing Letters The DLSF was created in 2009 in the memory of Ann Van Tassel, Scholarship Fund needs your help. Please donate. All money given who had enormous passions for calligraphy, for sharing what she to the fund is used for scholarships. You can make a contribution in learned, and for teaching. Ann was enormously creative and would honor of or in memory of a past teacher or a lost friend. The Danc- have been thrilled to meet the 2014 scholarship recipients. They ing Letters Scholarship Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. To contrib- all have her enthusiasm and desire to learn more and to share with ute, please go to our website www.dancinglettersscholarshipfund.org others their love of letters. or simply mail your tax deductible contribution to: The Dancing The Dancing Letters Scholarship Fund is available for annual con- Letters Scholarship Fund, 196 Lasell St., West Roxbury, MA 02132, ferences, local workshops, and yearlong calligraphy classes (such as USA – Elissa Barr 8 Bound & Lettered b Spring 2015 EREWHON, first of two pages. Gouache, color pencils, and gel pens. Erewhon (an anagram for “nowhere”) is a Utopia in a faraway land. The high-waisted, monoline lettering with a tall x-height and short ascenders and descenders was used to give a modern, futuristic look. Color pencils were used in the illustration on the first page to render the “lush... jungle growth” and “a young world vibrant with life.” Photography by Nicole Toesca. BETWEEN VERSE AND VISION BY RISA GETTLER A Few Excerpts from the Now Intergalactic Song Fest and Cosmic To move forward, I suggested we do one poem in the horizontal format so Miscelany. 2014. Risa Gettler. Hand-lettered and illustrated manuscript he could see how the poem would look on a horizontal page. At the same book of nineteen poems by John S. Tumlin. 40 pages, images and text on recto time, we would learn if we worked compatibly together. Fortunately, John pages only. Binding by Edna Wright. 22" x 13" x 4". Robert was happy with the decorative elements, delighted with my letter- ing, and comfortable with the horizontal format. An agreement was signed, In December 2011, I was contacted about a book of poems. The client, who and off I was on a three-year adventure. found me through a link on my guild’s website, wanted an original work of The nineteen poems are an interesting mix of old-world themes and hand lettering and illustration. The book would be a surprise gift for the science fiction, and it was apparent when I started on the second poem poet, John S. Tumlin, the client’s father. that each poem would be independently interpreted. Each one would be Through counting lines, words, and characters, as well as figuring the its own visual creation, each an integration of words and images. No two average number of words per line and maximum words per line, I was poems would be treated alike; they each would have their own style. able to estimate how many pages it would be. I recommended a horizontal A project of this depth involves things you can’t foresee. With this project, format for the book as many of the poems would fit on one double-column it was the time required for research – I did more reading than writing. page, resulting in fewer pages than a vertical format. My client, John Robert The poet, now retired, was a literature professor, and that is reflected in the Tumlin, said he wasn’t closed to a horizontal book, but that he had envi- many literary references in the poem. I read portions of Dante’s works to sioned a vertical one. (To avoid confusion between my client and his father, understand and interpret “The Lost Pilgrim.” “Marking Up the Sky” sent in this article I will refer to my client as “John Robert”). me researching astronomy. (I had to illustrate the poem twice, the second 14 Bound & Lettered b Spring 2015 A yale in a detail of the Aberdeen Bestiary, University of Aberdeen Library, MS 24, f16v. Copyright 1995 © Yale in the Bedford Hours, British Library Add. MS 18850, f256v. By permission of the British Library. University of Aberdeen. Used with permission. HERALDRY FOR CALLIGRAPHY BY HELEN SCHOLES I fairly recently joined the management incredibly good value for money! make. For they committee of the Calligraphy and Letter- Our first workshop was in September are not fixed ing Art Society (CLAS). Often referred to 2013, learning basic principles: designing but move as the as simply “the committee,” it is similar in and drawing a shield, what a compartment needs of fight- function to the board of directors of an is, the difference between the field and ing require; the American Guild. When we were discussing the charge, and much more. We had three yale advances renaming our Certificates of Skills courses, I additional workshops on heraldic beasts, one of them as heard about the course on the heraldic arts mantling (drapery tied to the helmet above it fights, folding that had been designed by Tim Noad, a very the shield, often given the form of acanthus the other back, well-known and respected heraldic artist leaves), and coronets and helms (crowns and so that if the who works at the College of Arms in London helmets). We were set tasks to complete with tip of the first (the official heraldic authority for England) formal notes to write up, and we were to de- is damaged The Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 16v. and who just happens to be a member (like sign a finished piece of work that combined by a blow, it is me) of Oxford Scribes. I saw Tim at a Letter heraldry and calligraphy. I chose to illus- replaced by the point of the second.” Exchange talk in London and asked if he trate the yale for my final piece. There is also a dark yale illustrated in would be interested in running a course the border of a page in the Bedford Hours, based in Oxford. Happily, he agreed. (Tim’s The Yale which was produced early in the fifteenth book on illumination, coauthored with My first task was to decide how to depict century for the wedding of John, Duke of Patricia Seligman, is out-of-print. It was titled the yale, as this mythical beast appears Bedford, to Anne of Burgundy.