Learning About Illuminated Manuscripts and Calligraphy

February 3, 2024 2:40 PM

I want to learn more about the history of illuminated manuscripts, and I would also like to teach myself how to write calligraphy in the style or styles that are specific to illuminated manuscripts — so, a two-part question.

1. I'd love recommendations for books that are histories of illuminated manuscripts. I've come across several online, but I'm not sure which one may be the best place to start. (It does not need to be written for a popular audience, per se. I'm very much comfortable reading more academic texts.) Also open to books that contain any contextual history you believe to be relevant.

2(a). Is there a name for the type of calligraphy that is more common to illuminated manuscripts? Medieval, Old English? I'm not confident of the taxonomy or search terms I should be using in this case. (For context: I've done calligraphy in the past and own basic calligraphy tools.)

2(b). Given the answer to 2(a) above, I'd appreciate any recommendations for books, YouTube series, or other instructive guides I can reference to begin teaching myself.

Thank you in advance!

posted by nightrecordings to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Keyword is Uncial: the script used in the Books of Kells etc. Numerous other HowTo channels on YT. Pick one that doesn't annoy you.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:58 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

There are a ton of very different kinds of handwriting used in illuminated manuscripts - this online paleography course is a nice overview of most of the important ones, and the "feedback" links on each page have a lot of detail about letter formation that should be helpful for calligraphy (e.g., here). The "Old English" style is usually called Gothic or blackletter, although as you can see on that site there are a lot of variants, since it was in use for so long and in so many places.
posted by theodolite at 3:55 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

Edward Johnston's Writing and Illuminating and Lettering has a lot about how to analyze calligraphy for exact letter shapes, thickness of pen stroke compared to letter height, and angle of hairline. This is an old classic.

I *think* the three big families of lettering styles would be uncial, gothic/old english, and italic. I don't know which one you might be looking for.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:18 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of Medieval Calligraphy insofar as a book goes, and it’s pretty reasonably priced.
posted by tautological at 9:53 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Drogin's a good and affordable entry, yes, with lots of notes what to pay attention to and how to actually write. The step up would be Mediavilla but fuck it's expensive and rare in English (French and Spanish editions are more available). My first teacher used to get us photocopies of the pages about hands we were working on.

Once you have the basics down, a lot of manuscript archives now digitise their libraries and make them available online for free. Annoyingly the British Library is currently rebuilding after a hacker attack, but Fren, German and Irish archives are extensive. What my current teacher does is sit down with a few pages from one of these manuscripts and work out the hand used in it, the quirks and joints and flourishes, until she's got a full alphabet and various extras. This allows us to recreate that particular scribe's hand. I've found that the more variations of Textur / blackletter I've studied like that, the more I'm developing my own stable variety. They can be as different as modern handwriting really, though of course mostly people with "good handwriting" got to write expensive manuscripts. Everyday accounts and letters and chancery hands are a different thing entirely, though studying them really improves insight into the formal versions.

Once you get started I'd recommend springing for a few sessions where an experienced calligrapher assesses your writing. It'll be brutal but it'll teach you what to pay attention to. For good blackletter or Uncial, proportions and the amount of "light" (spaces inside and between letters) are crucial, as are posture and slow steady speed. It's a surprisingly meditative exercise.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:03 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I was lucky enough to be taught Carolingian (Early Medieval) and blackletter (High Medieval, Late Medieval) in a high school art class. Those might be good terms to start with.

Blackletter is also called Gothic and has some variations, especially in how you do capitals. Writing the basic blackletter lower case alphabet might be a good start. What I remember from that art class is being told to keep our “pen angle” (angle of the nib vs the vertical) at a constant 45 degrees. About the first thing we did was produce a row of diamond shaped periods . . . . . trying to keep them even and level.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:32 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]

So, just happens that I listened to a podcast episode on this very subject a couple of weeks back.

569 The Man with a Passion for Medieval Manuscripts (with Christopher de Hamel)

Aand! The man has a few books~

enjoy!
posted by brappi at 4:55 AM on February 5 [2 favorites]

Sister Wendy has a nice show about illuminated manuscripts, if I am remembering correctly.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 9:37 PM on February 10