Calligraphy refers to stylus handwriting that is
not typesetting. It represents beauty of
the naturalness from handiwork rather than being produced by typesetter.
In a stricter term, it draws a distinction from lettering which uses a
machine to print figures
and symbols, and also has difference from epigraphy
which is inscribed on a
tombstone using a chisel.
Asian calligraphy is created with black ink and brush. It was believed that calligraphy coordinates soul and body and thus represents spiritual and physical energy as a whole.
How a person marks a blot or how a piece of a person’s stroke touches
on paper could be interpreted that the person has nature of a certain
kind. So it has been considered the most abstract and sublime form of
art.
A Chinese character letter is patterned in a circle, triangle or square.
In addition, a character is structured with certain proportions and those
proportions are harmonized with appointed number of strokes and blots,
positions and directions. The pattern of a character’s dynamic momentum
lies on how every touch of brush-tip leads strokes and blots.
Any extra stroke or blot fails to maintain equilibrium that whole figure
of a character is built on. As a way of self-discipline, Asian Calligraphy
has been educated and trained in upper class line to keep their temper.
Western Calligraphy has its very close relationship with Holy Bible.
Early Calligraphy runners were scribes who copied from manuscripts
to manuscripts of the Old and the New Testament. They first had to use
papyrus for their manuscripts and they could use parchment around 4th
century. The famous Dead Sea Scrolls were partly written in Greek uncial,
which is a long hand capital font.
Western calligraphers have been using colored ink for rubricating and
illumination on manuscripts. Illuminating handwork developed in its
early days of Medieval Era for the purpose of legibility of documents.
Later during the Era, decorations on manuscripts aimed at comprehension
(legibility) and an authority's symbol and signifiers of relative weights
between different parts of manuscript.
To confer prestige upon letters and legal documents, scribes invented
with their laborious practices various fonts depending on how pen was
held, in what order and directions strokes were leading.
Calligraphy, on the Western side, developed through transcribing mainly
the Scriptures of Holy Bible with decoration, representing scribe's
technical aspect and social authority's authenticity and fidelity upon
their production of documents.
documents.Referred from:
-Dianne Tillotson
http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/writing.htm
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