Author Archives: Patricia

Royal Regiment of Artillery Tercentenary scroll

Celebrating the 300th Anniversary of their founding, Wiltshire based Royal Artillery welcomed Her Majesty The Queen, Captain-General of The Royal Artillery, to Knighton Down in Larkhill, Wiltshire to attend a Review of the Royal Regiment of Artillery on 26 May 2016.
Raised by Royal Warrant in 1716, the Royal Regiment of Artillery marked a historic three centuries on 26 May 2016. Commonly known as the ‘Gunners’, the Royal Artillery provides firepower to the British Army.
The Queen has been Captain-General of The Royal Regiment of Artillery since 6 February 1952.
During her visit The Queen received the Royal Salute and inspected the Armoured Parade, before being presented with the Captain-General’s Baton by the youngest member of the Royal Artillery, 17 year old Gunner Mischa Kalis.
The Captain General’s Baton was launched on a circumnavigation of the globe on 1 May 2015 from the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. Known as the UBIQUE (meaning everywhere) 300 project, it has undertaken a relay of 60 expeditions through 30 countries, ranging from adventure training to battlefield studies to sports tours: over one thousand men and women from the Royal Artillery have taken part in its travels.
Photographer – Cpl Daniel Wiepen RLC (Army Photographer) – Army Headquarters

As a jobbing scribe, I rarely know what is going to be my next commission, but the one for the Royal Regiment of Artillery was one of the most interesting.

The years 2016 marked the Regiment’s tercentenary, and to celebrate this a group of their soldiers circumnavigated the globe. They took with them a specially commissioned titanium baton, inside of which was the vellum scroll being presented to The Queen on the right.

While the wording was being finalised, I experimented with the initial suggestions, knowing that the text would have to be quite small as the scroll needed to fit inside the baton. A tercentenary is a major achievement so I thought that a few flourishes here and there would add to the celebratory feel.

I was also looking forward to painting the Royal Arms and the badge of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. I made a few paste-ups to try to get the balance the best I could.

I then heard that the requirement was for no flourishes and a black and white image so adjusted things accordingly. The space below the citation on the right was for the signatures (see first picture above) which were written during the circumnavigation by Commonwealth Artilleries sending their greetings to The Queen, who is the Captain General of the Gunners.

It was a challenge to draw the Royal Arms and the Regiment’s badge as small as it needed to be, and the wheel of the gun carriage was actually just over 5 mm in the end. Despite the vellum going round the world, it arrived back to me for stretching in remarkably good condition – all credit to the soldiers who were involved.

Photographer – Cpl Daniel Wiepen RLC (Army Photographer) – Army Headquarters

This is another picture of The Queen inspecting the scroll, which has here been stretched over a piece of wood to keep the vellum flat.

However, this wasn’t the end of the story for me. I had the thrill of being invited to lunch, the special parade and the presentation of the baton and the scroll to The Queen. Being in the Royal Enclosure really was something special and we were this close to Her Majesty! It was a absolutely joyous day with families involved in watching marching bands, tug of war, gun carriage racing, a concert, and ending in fireworks. It was all such a treat and quite a change for me as I usually sit in my quiet workroom scratching away with a quill on vellum.

The signatures of the Commonwealth Artilleries are now in place and the vellum has been stretched.

The Gunners with swords drawn standing guard over the baton.

St Clement Danes and the RAF

St Clement Danes, an ‘island’ church in the Strand in London, is thought to be situated on a previous church founded by the Danes in the ninth century; it is named after St Clement, patron saint of mariners. The other island church is St Mary-le-Strand and they are both situated on islands in the middle of the road. The building was completed to a design by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682 but was badly damaged by the Blitz of London during the Second World War, and it was only restored in 1958. There is some dispute at to whether this is the ‘Bells of St Clements’ in the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ or whether that church is St Clement Eastcheap.

The church is the Royal Air Force Church mainly as a result of an appeal for funds for the rebuilding after the war. The Welsh slate floor of the church is engraved with the badges of over 800 RAF groups (stations, squadrons etc), and there is also a memorial to the Polish airmen who died in service during the war.

Along the aisles are ‘shrines of remembrance’ – illuminated cases which display the Books of Remembrance for those who lost their lives in service to the country. There are eleven books displayed; the first book, nearest the altar, contains the names of those who died before the RAF came into being. Books two to nine have the names of those who lost their lives in the second World War, book ten contains the names from VJ day to 2013, and the eleventh book is from April 2013. The pages are turned every day by a turner that looks a little like a military sword (see on the left in this photo).

In my book The Art and History of Calligraphy (published 2017) I feature one of these pages with names written by the great Sheila Waters (se right). Sheila was one of a handful of the best scribes in the country, including Dorothy Mahoney, who took part in this immense project supervised by Alfred Fairbank. Sheila said: ‘I wrote a lot for the St Clement Danes’ Roll of Honour. It amounted to about 33,000 names over a period of six years, during which I had two children so it had to be fitted in with changing nappies and feeding babies!’ Her, and the other scribes’, precise rhythmic script is a fitting memorial to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Gold on Parchment, exhibition at Cornelissen in London

It was a great privilege to work with L Cornelissen & Son at 105 Great Russell Street in London (just along from the British Museum) to mount the very first exhibition they have had at the shop. They are on a very busy thoroughfare and most people visiting the British Museum go past their front door. The exhibition was in the window and so it could be seen even when the shop was closed. The shop itself is wonderful as can be seen on the right – and it really is almost impossible not to go inside! Kathy Pearlson from Cornelissen, who set up the exhibition, did a terrific job of making sure that every piece could be seen and that the exhibition looked wonderful.

The exhibition was arranged on behalf of the Heritage Crafts Association for London Craft Week 2016, echoing the theme of ‘paper’ for their first anniversary. Some of the best calligraphers and illuminators in the country were asked to submit one or two pieces of their work on vellum for the exhibition, and the response was terrific! For those who didn’t mange to see it, here are some of the pieces exhibited. The photographs were kindly taken by Yanko Tihov. On the right: Sam Somerville.

Tim Noad, on the right

Mary Noble (this piece is tiny!)

Ronnie Cruwys – also see her website ‘Drawing the Street‘, and again a small piece

Ann Hechle

Patricia Lovett, another small piece

Peter Thornton, small again

Peter Halliday (I am featuring this piece in my British Library book, The Art and History of Calligraphy, to be published in 2017).

Ewan Clayton

John Woodcock (another tiny piece)

Gemma Black

Jan Pickett

Jan Mehigan

Cathy Stables

Lin Kerr

Wang Dongling at the V&A, London Craft Week 2016

The second London Craft Week proved to be even better than the first, if that’s possible. At the launch at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world-renowned great Chinese calligrapher, Wang Dongling, demonstrated his great art in front of hundreds of people. It must have been nerve-wracking! His ‘writing surface’ was a huge sheet of clear glass placed vertically, and he used some rather sticky paint and a large brush. Because it was clear glass the distraction of the movement of people through the glass and the flashes of the cameras as he wrote must have been difficult to overcome.

I managed to film the whole calligraphic artwork – The Way that can be Spoken – from beginning to end on my iPad. Here it is. It is a bit wobbly, and other people got in the way, but it’s pretty much the sequence from beginning to end. As someone who has also demonstrated calligraphy to the public, and been ‘the hand’ for film and television, I have some knowledge of how nerve-wracking this can be – making sure that the letter-forms are correct, lively and true, with no going back to make adjustments. However, I have to hasten to add that my efforts are nothing like the scale of this, nor at this standard (and, of course, not Chinese writing!).

Straight after the inaugural London Craft Week last year we were talking about the plans for London Craft Week 2016, and the contribution of the Heritage Crafts Association, taking into account the fact that the first anniversary is often thought of as ‘paper’. I suggested one of the great ‘performance art’ Chinese calligraphers, who I have seen writing with brushes as big as mops on huge pieces of paper on the floor. This would be such a dramatic event for the launch of London Craft Week 2016, especially as this year it had an international theme*. However, who to choose? Who was considered to be the best? I asked the person who I knew would know – Ewan Clayton MBE. I was delighted when I found out that it was possible for him to be invited to the event and I ensured that he was introduced to the great man – two renowned calligraphers, one from the east and one from the west. This is the photo I took of them both.

*It was a throwaway comment from The Prince of Wales at the launch of the very first London Craft Week back in February 2015 at the Art Workers’ Guild that gave rise to the international theme of this year’s event. Here he is with letter cutter Lida Cardozo Kindersley at that occasion. As he was leaving the event, The Prince of Wales turned to Philippa Hobson, London Craft Week Programme Director, and me (I was there for the Heritage Crafts Association, one of the four Strategic Partners) and he said ‘What about international craft?’, and Philippa replied in a flash – ‘That’s next year’, and indeed it was!

Orpiment – it glisters but isn’t gold

Orpiment, the word derived from the Latin Auripigmentum, and also known as king’s yellow, has been known since Roman times, and was a treasured pigment used in mediæval manuscripts. Its particular value was because it was yellow and could not only replace gold when it was unavailable or too expensive, but because orpiment was similar to gold and that was the colour that was considered to be near-divine and, like God, indestructible.

Cennino Cennini in in his Libro dell’ Arte of the 15th century, describes orpiment as ‘a handsome yellow more closely resembling gold than any other colour’. It was used in books like the Book of Kells (see above) which has no gold. The Lindisfarne Gospels does have a few areas of gold, but orpiment was the colour used for yellow as in this incipit to Matthew (right).

Other yellows available at the time were not nearly as lasting as orpiment; saffron, urine and fish bile – all forms of yellow – were all far more fugitive. Orpiment could not be ground too finely, though, or it lost its egg yolk golden colour, but the advantage of this was that by being still a little crystalline, it actually glistened and reflected the light.

It is, though, one of those colours where it is very wise not to lick brushes. Orpiment is arsenic trisulphide, and Cennini said ‘beware of soiling your mouth with it, lest you suffer personal injury’! Wise words.

It wasn’t a colour that mixed well, though. Sulphur in the pigment reacted with copper in verdigris, and the lead in ceruse, or white lead. In the 17th century, Cornelius Jansen wrote: ‘Orpiment will ly faire on any culler, except verdigres, but no culler can ly faire on him, he kills them all’.

Schools’ Handwriting Competition 2016

Class A winner

Is handwriting still important and should it be taught in schools? Isn’t it better to teach keyboard skills instead?

Four year-olds. In each instance, the winner is on top, the runner-up on the left and the third place on the right.

As Chief Judge of the Schools’ Handwriting Competition, I am often asked these questions. Of course children should be taught keyboarding skills (as I type this I wish I had been!), but that should not be to the exclusion of handwriting being taught properly and well. We now have evidence for the importance of handwriting.

Five year-olds

The Handwriting in the 21^st Century summit was held four years ago in the US with very interesting findings

Six year-olds

Research revealed that handwriting influences reading, creative writing, language and critical thinking, yet 25–33% of US students are struggling to achieve competence in handwriting.

Class B winner

Here are three quotations from the report:

Seven year-olds

When students do not adequately develop handwriting skills, the negative implications can be lifelong. Without consistent exposure to handwriting, research indicates that students can experience difficulty in certain processes required for success in reading and writing, including:

retrieving letters from memory
reproducing letters on paper
spelling accurately
extracting meaning from text or lecture
interpreting the context of words and phrases

Eight year-olds

[Doubt about the value of handwriting instruction] is similar to what happened with math as calculators and computers came into vogue… people wondered whether students needed to learn how to do math. The answer in both cases is absolutely “yes.” Writing is not obsolete.

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators

Class C winner

Illegible handwriting is a problem for a large number of children…it can affect [children] not only personally (their self-esteem), but also academically, and their careers in the future. So, it’s got a very long trajectory.

Dr. Gerry Conti, assistant professor of occupational therapy at Wayne State University

Nine year-olds

In the US many states do not teach handwriting beyond Grade 1 (age 7), yet in doing so, they are seriously affecting the future academic achievement of their young people as was underlined in this research.

Ten year-olds

As a craftsperson, I know how important using our hands is to memory and how repetition can lead to perfection. But it is the influence on our cognitive functions where handwriting also scores. Students who hand-wrote wrote more words, wrote words faster and expressed more ideas than those who used a keyboard.

Class D winner

Teaching good handwriting should not be an option, as it is in US states, Finland and a few other countries, as it has such an important effect on so much more than just committing words to paper. And it is worth helping and encouraging children who struggle with writing to make progress as handwriting has far reaching effects.

Eleven year-olds

All the finalists in the Schools’ Handwriting Competition are to be commended for the excellence of their writing, and, with almost 10,000 entries, all those finalists have done extraordinarily well.

Twelve year-olds

The judges look for good handwriting, not calligraphy, nor specially fancy styles with distorted forms and lots of curls on the letters, but the sort of writing that will stand you in good stead whether you are making a shopping list or writing a school project.

Thirteen year-olds

Letters should be well-formed, and with comfortable joins where appropriate.

There should be appropriate spacing between the words and the poem should be placed well on the page.

Staff winners

The number of very competent entries from 4 year-olds is increasing year-by-year, and this year, too, there were far better entries from the older age groups. It is encouraging, too, to see the number of boys in the finalists, particularly as Class Winners.

However, some finalists lost out because there were no school postcodes on the backs of the paper (with 10,000 entries it is impossible to check which school ‘Sarah Smith’ belongs to), and putting entries into the wrong age-groups also was a disadvantage for the judges.

Overall, though, the standard was very high this year and all who entered the competition have the advantage of knowing that their skill in handwriting will also aid their reading, spelling, understanding and creativity – all a bonus!

Colour in the pen

Some people think that calligraphy is essentially black writing with perhaps a touch of red. How limiting! Calligraphy can be any and every colour. One way of using colour that I really like is where the pen actually mixes the colour, as on the right. It’s not one line one colour and one line another, but two colours which are mixed, somewhat randomly, as you write.

It is a good idea to choose two colours which have greater contrast than the two in the piece above, but the extract was about water and fishing, so to echo that I chose a bluey-green and a greeny-blue. The text was Welsh with an English translation. So, to start I wrote out the text in differing styles and heights of letters; after experimenting I decided on Italic for the Welsh and tiny dancing capitals for the English. I had a smallish piece of vellum so I didn’t want to use a large nib. I chose a Mitchell/Manuscript size 5 for both styles of writing, and a size 6 for the title and dedication line to be positioned at the bottom, and then wrote out the words

The lines were of very varied lengths, so a right or left alignment would leave a rather ragged edge. I decided on a centred arrangement after a bit of experimentation. I cut up the lines, measured each one and marked the centre point then placed them on another piece of paper to see how it would look, and where the title and dedication line should be positioned.

Once all the decisions had been made, I prepared the vellum (see my Illumination DVD and Illumination: Gold and Colour book here), ruled the lines and mixed up the paint. Writing with two colours in the pen is not quite as hit-and-miss as it may seem at first. With this process individual letters usually consist of more than one colour, and if this doesn’t come out of the pen then it needs to be ‘engineered’. The Calligraphy Clip (see below) shows how to do this. The pen isn’t filled as is usual, but one colour just ‘tipped’ on to the underneath of the pen with a brush, As each stroke is written, the colours in the previous letters and also the ones above need to be taken into account to ensure an overall even effect – not too much of one colour, not too much of the other, and not too much of the mix. Sometimes it’s necessary to go over some strokes with a different colour to ensure this. It certainly doesn’t encourage rhythm and flow, but can be most effective. I find it very appropriate for when I’m asked to write out pieces for weddings or anniversaries; each colour represents one person and the mix of colours suggests their lives together.

This piece has more contrast in the colours, as they are vermilion and ultramarine.

This Calligraphy Clip explains how to use two colours in the pen and demonstrates the process, and some of the pitfalls.

Mixing Colour in the Pen

Sheila Waters prints

Layout 1 PLEASE NOTE: I am no longer selling these prints but have left up this post for interest.

When Sheila Waters, the ‘Queen of Calligraphy’, according to the great Hermann Zapf, visited last summer, she left me with some glorious prints of her works. Colour sings out from all but those in black and white, and the quality is so fine that you can really see Sheila’s supreme skill and artistry in each one. Here are some of them, but I am no longer selling them. Right – Grandeur of God

Right – Love and Peace

Right – I wandered lonely

Right – The Lord bless you

Right – People are in bondage

Right – Ponder

Right – Timelime Triptych

Vellum and Acts of Parliament II

Great news! There was a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday 20th April 2016, on whether to continue to print Acts of Parliament on vellum or not. This is the record of the debate in Hansard. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of continuing to print Acts of Parliament on vellum. This was a wonderful reward to all the hard work many people had done in writing to their MPs and publicising the campaign. However, this decision lasts only for this parliament, so the question may well be raised again.

February 16th 2016: I had started to write this blog with a heavy heart. On Saturday 7th February 2016, we heard that the printers of Acts of Parliament on vellum had been given 30 days’ notice, and that printing was due to stop on April 1st (what an appropriate date I thought!). This was a surprise as we understood from James Gray MP’s Point of Order last November that there would be a debate in the House of Commons. This was what happened in 1999 when the Lords decided to stop using vellum and a debate and vote in the House of Commons decided to continue, so vellum was still used. So this time there was no debate and the decision had been taken.

I contacted the great Sharon Hodgson MP, Shadow Minister for Children, and she raised a Point of Order on Tuesday 9th February and the Speaker advised her to look into an Early Day Motion so that MPs could register their views on this.

However, the decision had clearly been made. Sir Paul Beresford is the Chair of the Commons Administration Committee, and Lord Laming is the Chair of the equivalent in the House of Lords. James Gray is a member of the Commons committee and he, and two other MP members who said that they had been ‘misled’ were not in favour of using paper instead of vellum. So who took the decision, when and where?

Following Sharon’s Point of Order there was a bit of a media circus and I was interviewed by Radio 5 Live, Radio Scotland, and was on BBC News at 10. I was also interviewed for a piece on the BBC website. They used my photo of Lee Mapley (right) scraping a skin, which is featured in my Illumination – Gold and Colour book.

Sharon was on a number of programmes too and Paul Wright of William Cowley on even more.

We made the case as well as we could but knew it was bolting the stable door …!

Then on Monday 15th March we all woke up to the news that Matt Hancock MP has stated that the Cabinet Office would cover the cost of vellum. Hurray! He told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Recording our laws on vellum is a millennium long tradition, and surprisingly cost effective. While the world around us constantly changes, we should safeguard some of our great traditions and not let the use of vellum die out.’

There were many newspaper articles as a result – the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail being but some.

The campaign has been run by the Heritage Crafts Association; this is their press release.

As I write this all is not quite safely delivered in that the process still has to be gone through, the decision reversed, as many MPs as possible to sign the Early Day Motion which James Gray is leading. I am positive but also know that ‘there’s many a slip …’!

I’ll update this blog when everything has been confirmed – in the way we hope it will be!

Patricia Lovett MBE

Calligraphy | Illumination | Design