Patricia Lovett MBE

Calligraphy | Illumination | Design

St Vitale, Ravenna – secret pens and ink pots

Ravenna is one of the most amazing places I have been fortunate enough to visit. I was so bowled over the first time we went there that this year we went again, and if you haven’t been yet, don’t leave it too long before you go! For me one of the best places was the Church of St Vitale, the patron saint of Ravenna. The building was begun in 526 and finished in 547 – an amazing feat of craftsmanship in just over 20 years.

It is octagonal in shape and is a mix between Roman styles (dome, shape of the doorways, etc) and Byzantine styles (the capitals to the columns and narrow bricks).

It is the mosaics that are the most spectacular though to me, and perhaps the most famous is that of the Emperor Justinian and his court to the left of the high altar, and his Empress Theodora opposite him. Justinian is wearing a deep Tyrian-purple robe, dyed from a liquid which comes from the murex brandaris mollusc. Each sea creature gives only one or two drops and it’s been estimated that 12,000 molluscs were required to dye a single robe. It’s easy to see why the colour was restricted to the most important people and even Roman Senators had only a broad purple stripe on their white togas!

The Empress Theodora with her court is depicted on the wall opposite her husband, and she is dressed in a rich purple cloak, but this time hers is embellished with a gold pattern and figures processing at the base. As her hand reaches out to hold the gold and jewelled bowl, it pushes her robe aside to reveal a white dress with a magnificent gold thread and coloured border. Of course, all this decoration, the expressions on the faces, and the richly patterned dresses and headdresses are not painted, but are mosaics. The workmanship is simply incredible! Look particularly at the patterns on the clothes of the woman on the right in this picture.

It is interesting in such an old church to see within the mosaics, if you look closely, examples of writing equipment – perhaps an indication of the importance of the written word to Christians. The man to the right of Maximianus in the Justinian mosaic above is holding a jewelled book (more on Golden Books), but there are also images of writing paraphanalia. Here is John the Evangelist holding an open codex, and beside him on a little pedestal table is his quill, quill knife, ink pot, and probably an ink horn. Note the red tabs on the book which are just dropping down. These were used to secure the bouncy animal-skin pages when the book was closed. Quite a few manuscript books had hasps and clasps, though not all have survived still attached to the binding.

In this mosaic the Evangelist Luke is pointing to his symbol, the calf (though looking more like a full grown bull here!), and holding his Gospel. You can make out the hasps and clasps a bit better here. At his feet is what looks a bit like a hat box with a strap to carry it. In fact this was a container in which to keep scrolls, as you can see they are tightly wound and stacked vertically inside – and remember that all of this is made up of tiny pieces of tile.

The Evangelist Mark indicates a very ferocious lion as his symbol, and again, on a pedestal table, are his quill, quill knife, ink horn and ink pot.

And lastly, here is Matthew with his winged man symbol. Perhaps rightly so as the first Evangelist he has both writing equipment and a box of scrolls. Note the lock on the front of his scroll box.

This entry was posted in Blog, Craft, Historical building and buildings and tagged books, Emperor Justinian, Empress Theodora, Golden Book, ink, ink horms, ink pots, mosaics, pens, quill knife, quills, scrolls, St Vitale Ravenna on 4 December 2013 by Patricia.

Durham Cathedral all lit up!

Durham Cathedral like you have never seen it before. This wonderfully majestic Romanesque Cathedral, put up by the Normans to replace the original Anglo-Saxon White Church built to house St Cuthbert’s shrine, was more than colourful when, as part of the Durham Lumière Festival, images from the Lindisfarne Gospels were projected on to the building.

The Gospels themselves are stunning, but when shown as enlarged as they are here, the true artistry of Eadfrith is emphasised.

This is an interesting reference to it, albeit in the Daily Mirror!

This entry was posted in Blog, Historical building and buildings and tagged Durham Cathedral, Lindisfarne Gospels on 15 November 2013 by Patricia.

Are columns always straight?

Columns have been used for thousands of years to make impressive porches over significant buildings, or to record something important, such as Trajan’s or Nelson’s Columns, and the impression is that if they weren’t straight we would notice. However, if you look really carefully at columns, such as these from the British Museum, you’ll see that they have a very slight bulge just below half way.

This is, of course, not new. This shape for columns was also used for those on the Parthenon in Athens (left). The columns on the beautiful Temple of Vesta in Rome (right), have a similar slight bulging just below half way. It is more difficult to make this out, though, with the railings in the foreground and the metal supports to the columns.

More obvious perhaps are the columns at the front of the Pantheon in Rome, the temple to all gods. Let your eye focus on the black space between the columns and it may be easier to make this out.

This shaping is called entasis, and is defined as the slight convexity of the column shaft which is introduced to correct the visual illusion of concavity. If the brain believed what the eye was telling it, without entasis the building would look as if it could not be supported by the columns.

Now the space between the columns is the ‘counter space’, and this shape is thus slightly concave, going in just above halfway down. This is the shape that most good letterers use in their downstrokes. In drawn letters, this is quite easy to see as here. In this alphabet by Michael Harvey the swelling on the downstroke of the outlined letter B is quite obvious, so, too, is the increased width at the base of the outline stroke on the downstroke of the letter N. However, this shape to the downstrokes can also be seen quite clearly in the smaller letters in the black alphabet.

This letter-shape was also used in mediaeval manuscripts. The downstroke (or minim as used by academics) of the Lombardic Capital letter F here in this British Library manuscript shows distinct signs of swelling at the top and bottom of the double stroke. (Note, too, the slight discolouration of the vermilion pigment at the top and on the right-hand stroke.)

In Calligraphy, when using a broad-edged nib to make just one downstroke rather than those above which use two or more strokes, the technique is called ‘pressure-release-pressure’. So there is pressure on the pen to start the downstroke, this is then slightly released just above half way between the guidelines for x-height, and then pressure is applied again nearer the base guideline. British calligrapher Peter Thornton, now living in the US, is one of the best practitioners of this technique (see above right). It is, though, one that can be learned and applied after practice, and it does make a great deal of difference to how letters look. If you’ve not tried it before, then why not get out your pen and have a go?

This entry was posted in Blog, Historical building and buildings and tagged calligraphy, columns, entasis, lettering on 5 November 2013 by Patricia.

Here lies the beautifully lettered gravestone …

It is rare to get a whole batch of beautiful gravestones, and even rarer to be able to spot the hand of real craftspeople at work. This is clearly the case in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church in Langar, Nottinghamshire. The church is a Grade I listed building, and is quite wonderful inside, and large, too, for a small country parish. But nowhere on all the records of the church does it mention these wonderful stones, such as the one on the right. Carved in slate, the lettering is still as crisp as they were when first made. This one to William James is dated 1809, and although it has little text, the decorative surrounding is quite wonderful. A grieving woman tugs on a rope or swash from an urn, and this is balanced on the right hand side by the same swash being caught up on the branch of a tree.

This early gravestone dated 1720, some 80 years before the one above, is not quite so fine. Here a rather Chinese-looking sad cherub spreads its wings with wonderfully carved feathers to protect Anne James, who died when she was only 42. The curly letters in the words of ‘Here’ and ‘James’ contrast with the fairly restrained lettering of the rest of the gravestone, but see how the letter carver has had a bit of fun by extending the serifs into spirals on some of the ascenders, such as the l of lies, and the B and d of Body in the first line.

This one from 1730 is very interesting, and again not of the same quality as some of the later others. I did tweet about this soon after we had visited the church (follow me on Twitter) as I find it so interesting. This, too, has a delightfully sad angel at the top, with eyes this time that are remarkably similar to those in the Lindisfarne Gospels. There is a great deal to learn from this stone about forward planning and the need to sketch something out to resolve any design issues before you start. So in the larger capitals at the top, there are conventional abbreviations and contractions with the letter e tucked into the v of the y to make ye, the letters h and e conjoined in he, and a slightly smaller letters at the end of the second and third lines. But what happens towards the bottom? Choosing that size of lettering has meant that the letter cutter has not had room to complete the lines, and so the remaining one or two words in each line have been squashed above or below. Charming though it is, it really doesn’t work!

But this one certainly does! A wonderfully vibrant and lively border of swags, foliage and flowers really draw the eye in rather than distract from the lettering. The exuberantly flourished H of Here at the top contrasts with the second line, and the third again with the fourth. The advantage of planning is also shown at the base where the four lines of lettering sit neatly within the left and right borders, although the last two lines have slightly smaller words, but this doesn’t detract from the overall feel. And we have a name! W Barnes was the sculptor. This is rare indeed to have this information.

And the high standard continues. It seems that W Barnes had a workshop where he was able to pass on his skills. The name Wood has been carved near the base on the right of this later stone of 1810. The unusual curved lettering, sitting neatly into the flourishes or just underneath contrasts with the conventional straight lines of the rest of the citation. It is likely that the gravestone was carved in one hit, even though Richard died just a few days short of a year after his wife, but it is interesting to see the two ways in which his named has been carved, once in Copperplate and the second time in Small capitals.