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hen I was only eleven years old, living in Vijont, Italy, about 25 miles from Aviano Air
Force Base, I found an old Christmas card buried in the bottom drawer of our
bookcase. I stole it and carried it with me all day as I attended school on the air base.
Every spare moment I found, I pulled out this deep, red card and stared at it. I
allowed my fingers to trace the gold raised lettering printed on the front. It was
written in thick, old world writing. Looking back now, it was a bit gaudy, but I was
entranced and my passion for calligraphy began with that small card.
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very day after school, those who lived far away from the base sat on buses and waited
for every other grade to get out of school to join them. It was on the bus, waiting,
that I first attempted to make my own letters; to copy the ones I had fallen in love
with. They were horrible, absolutely horrible, but I kept trying. I traced the outline of
each letter onto my schoolbook paper and colored it in with the side of my pencil. Still
terrible.
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hen I finally arrived home, I raced into the living room and proceeded to peruse
through every encyclopedia book we owned. Wouldn't you know it, the "World Book
Encyclopedia" has as it's first page a dissertation on the letter of the alphabet that
book belongs to, complete with a pictorial history of the letter itself, how often its
used in the English language, the different ways it is pronounced, what it can
represent when it stands alone, and a brief written history of the letter. (Did you
know that the 5th letter of the alphabet, the "e," is the most frequent letter used?) I
think this is where my love of the history of letters came from. Not only could I make
the letter really pretty, but there was a substance there...a reason why you would
want it to look pretty.
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ubsequent volumes showed pictures of charters, and ships logs, and constitutions, and
a vast array of historical documents, all written in some form of calligraphy. Amazing! I
was very tempted to tear each and every page out and seclude it in some secret place
just for me, but thoughts of Dad and his belt made me think better of it. Instead, I
made tracings of everything I found and continued to work at forming my own letters. I
eventually got pretty good at drawing the letters out and then coloring them in. I think
this is the reason why my letter forms are better than most.
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didn't start with a calligraphy pen or a calligraphy marker. I started with a 2 lead pencil
and an eraser...a lot of erasers. I drew each letter as if it was a picture. It wasn't until
moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1980 that I discovered there were actually pens that
could form the letters I had come to adore. Imagine the novelty (of which never wore
off). My first pen was a Schaeffer Calligraphy fountain pen with a metal nib that I found
at a Thrifty store on a trip for ice cream. You screwed the nib off and inserted a
cartridge of black, royal blue, or red and wrote to your hearts content. It leaked a lot,
but boy! Did I have a great time with that pen? I do have to say that I had to relearn
everything all over again though, but it didn't take as long as it did the first time.
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hen, I discovered Desert Decor (now known as Desert Art Supplies) on East Charleston
Boulevard and found a Speedball Calligraphy book, a pen holder, and Speedball "C"
series nib set. The gentleman at the counter suggested Higgins Eternal Ink and now I'm
a customer for life. (Of both the ink and the store.)
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gain, it was a learning experience. How deep do you dip the nib so you don't turn your
fingers black? How do you get rid of the excess ink so you don't have these huge
inkblots all over your paper? How often do you rinse the nib off? How do you keep the
letters crisp? What the hell is sandarac powder for? What's an Arkansas stone and how
do you use it? How do you not over sharpen your nib so you don't tear the hell out of
your paper? Too many questions.
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just kept practicing, teaching myself everything I could; reading everything I could get
my hands on. I was stealing pages from magazines wherever I went, collecting
typography to imitate. What else could I do? Michael's Craft stores and their calligraphy
classes hadn't made it to Las Vegas yet. Calligraphers were rare.
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ooks helped a lot. The first one after the Speedball Calligraphy book was Margaret
Shepherd's "Using Calligraphy." She hand- calligraphied the whole book. Impressive. In
fact, it is from that book that I stole...um...borrowed my portrait from. Thanks Margaret.
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n another visit to Desert Decor in 1995, I spied a small flier taped to their front door.
WhooHoo! Calligraphy class! Taught by Joan Williams! I called, sent her a check, and
attended the class. It was being held in an art gallery on the other side of town. They
served lukewarm punch and crunchy cookies as snacks, but otherwise it was quite nice.
The display at the time was the Dinotopia artwork. Very neat stuff. Quite a few ladies
were in attendance. We were seated in 2 rows of long foldout tables, and I waited in
anticipation.
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he was British. Of course, she had to be. Heck, the most coolest calligraphy style is
called "Old English" for goodness sakes! She was almost exactly as I expected her to be
and although the kindness in her eyes gave her away, as she began to teach, you could
see in your mind the ruler smacking the back of your hand whenever you made a
mistake. (That never happened; all I'm saying is that Joan is very disciplined in her craft.)
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he hand we were learning was called "foundational." It's the one every wannabe
calligrapher skips over in every book because it's not fancy enough to be calligraphy.
It's also one of the most difficult to master, just like " Roman," the type you are seeing
now. I had actually tried it and when I screwed it up-it became a challenge to get. I
thought I had finally beat it, but as with any craft called a "practice," there is always
more to learn.
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oan showed me some small, essential; finesse strokes that helped improve the letter
forms. I seized the opportunity of the intimacy of the classes to bring in my work and
show it to a professional calligrapher to get an assessment. Joan seemed quite
indifferent, which completely crushed my ego, and I walked away resolved not to pursue
any notions of becoming a professional myself.
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bout six months later, I received a letter in the mail from Joan. She wanted to set up an
appointment to see me. Joan had been the premiere calligrapher in Las Vegas for years
and was about to go into semi-retirement, no longer taking in new clients. She wanted
me to be the "go to guy" for any new calls she would be receiving. Damned unreadable
British! (hehe) What a meeting. I was ecstatic! and thus began my professional
calligraphy career. Joan was absolutely wonderful as a business mentor and taught me
alot about the local calligraphy market.
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