The revival of calligraphy in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century was part of a broader artistic reaction against the mechanization of manual crafts. About 1870 the English author, socialist, and artist William Morris turned his attention to the ancient practices of scribes and began to experiment with writing. Using quills, he wrote out and illuminated several manuscripts on parchment and paper; he later became interested in printing, and he established the Kelmscott Press in 1891. His inquiries into calligraphy and his patronage of the book arts induced paper and parchment makers, among others, to revive forgotten manufacturing standards, and his study and collection of manuscripts inspired others to pursue calligraphy.
Among those who were indirectly inspired by Morris’s activities was the British calligrapher Edward Johnston, who explored medieval and Renaissance techniques and materials relating to manuscript preparation and writing. Starting with a version of half uncial, Johnston eventually settled on a 10th-century version of English Carolingian as a basic, or “foundational,” hand from which other calligraphic styles could be developed. He became an influential teacher of a generation of type designers and calligraphers; his Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (1906), was a landmark work for the modern revival of calligraphy.
A calligraphic renaissance had already begun in Austria and Germany by then, through the efforts of the Austrian royal archivist Rudolf von Larisch, who lectured on lettering and typography in Vienna, and the type designer Rudolf Koch in Offenbach, Ger. The Germanic approaches to calligraphy in the early 20th century were quite distinct from English revivalism, especially in the German writers’ inclination to seek inspiration in writing materials. In 1905 von Larisch introduced the concept of the “language of materials” (Materialsprache) as applied to writing (Unterricht in ornamentaler Schrift; “Instruction in Ornamental Writing”). He examined the way letters were made with a variety of tools and, conversely, the effects the tools had on the letters. Von Larisch developed modern alphabets that emphasized the figure-ground relation between the letter and the writing surface. Rudolf Koch, who spent most of his working life at the Klingspor type foundry, used historic models as a springboard for his modernistic calligraphic and typographic inventions. His writing ranged from formal styles to densely massed blocks of black-letter text enlivened with bold, colourful initials. Like Johnston, Koch was a devoted and influential teacher.
Art and architecture schools in Europe and America gradually followed London’s Royal College of Art, where Johnston taught, in offering courses in lettering and calligraphy: these, along with the careful study of sound letter forms, instilled an awareness in students of the rich heritage of the alphabet. Accordingly, type design was taken over from technicians and engineers by lettering and calligraphic artists and scholars, including Stanley Morison, Jan van Krimpen, William Addison Dwiggins, Bruce Rogers, Frederic Goudy, and Hermann Zapf, who designed some of the best typefaces of the 20th century. This calligraphic-based tradition in type design has continued in the computer age with designers such as Charles Bigelow, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Kris Holmes, and Sumner Stone, all of whom studied calligraphy before designing typefaces.
Before World War II English and German calligraphic influences came together in the United States. Ernst Detterer, who had studied with Edward Johnston in England in 1913, taught lettering and calligraphy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1921 to 1931. He later became custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the Newberry Library in Chicago, where he was instrumental in building up an important collection of historical writing books. In 1941 he initiated a calligraphic study group at the library that included graphic artists and type designers such as R. Hunter Middleton, James Hayes, Ray DaBoll, and Bruce Beck.
George Salter moved to New York City from Germany in 1934 and in 1937 began teaching lettering and calligraphy at Cooper Union, where he inspired many students to enter the world of commercial lettering. He also designed hundreds of book jackets that incorporated his unmistakable calligraphic style and that doubtless influenced the many graphic artists who were exposed to them.
After World War II American interest in calligraphy began to spread beyond the area of graphic design, and both professional and amateur calligraphers were attracted to classes and demonstrations by Arnold Bank, a design professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Lloyd Reynolds, who taught italic handwriting to generations of students at Reed College, and other pioneering designers. Calligraphy was clearly becoming familiar to the general population: in 1947 Paul Standard, a skilled amateur calligrapher, published an article on italic handwriting in the popular Woman’s Day magazine.
Italic script, based on the styles of Arrighi and Palatino, had already become quite popular in the United Kingdom; in 1952 the Society for Italic Handwriting was founded there by the English calligrapher Alfred Fairbank, a pupil of Graily Hewitt. Fairbank, who was undoubtedly the strongest advocate for the italic hand in the 20th century, published his first manual on learning italic handwriting in 1932, and he continued to publish books and articles on this topic for the rest of his life. In 1954, more than 400 years after its first appearance, Arrighi’s La operina was translated by John Howard Benson as The First Writing Book. Benson wrote out his translation using both the layout and the writing style of the original; he included a facsimile of Arrighi’s work as well as notes on writing Arrighi’s italic.
In 1921 Edward Johnston’s students, and their students, had organized the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, “zealously directed toward the production of books and documents” by hand and the advancement of the crafts of member scribes, gilders, and illuminators. The program of this London-based professional group, which continued in the 21st century, was conducted by means of lectures, publications, and exhibitions, and membership was open to anyone interested in calligraphy. In the late 1960s the preeminent English scribe Donald Jackson went to the United States to give a series of lectures, workshops, and classes. Jackson sparked a renewed interest in calligraphy and illumination on both U.S. coasts, and in 1974 a group of calligraphers and lettering artists formed the first modern American calligraphic organization, the Society of Scribes. Other groups were formed in the 1970s and ’80s, and by the end of the century there were calligraphic organizations in nearly every state. These organizations sponsored workshops, classes, lectures, and journals, and they joined together for an annual week-long national calligraphy conference. Other calligraphic revivals began during the last quarter of the 20th century in Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
Printing technology played a role in the calligraphic revival of the 1970s. By then photocopiers had become widely available, so that instructional handouts and model sheets were easy to produce. Publishers issued new writing manuals and reprinted some older ones, some in facsimile; several professional journals reproduced commercial and artistic cutting-edge calligraphic work. Fountain pens and fibre-tip markers were manufactured for broad-edged calligraphy, and materials for various styles of writing once again became readily available to calligraphers.
Radical changes in the aesthetics of the art followed the renewed interest in calligraphy in the late 20th century. Some of the younger practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic began to de-emphasize text in favour of letterforms and gesture, moving calligraphy in the direction of contemporary painting and drawing. Especially noteworthy are the works of Denis Brown, Thomas Ingmire, Suzanne Moore, Brody Neuenschwander (whose work appears in many of the films of Peter Greenaway), Eliza Schulte, and Susan Skarsgard. Their work goes well beyond the formal, traditional calligraphy in which they were all trained. These artists and the thousands of amateurs who practice calligraphy have ensured the vitality of contemporary calligraphy.
Many institutions and libraries around the world contain calligraphic manuscripts and printed books, but only a few specialize in such holdings. Noteworthy in the United States are the Hofer Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; the Plimpton Collection in the Columbia University Library, New York City; the Wing Foundation in the Newberry Library, Chicago; and the Harrison Collection in the San Francisco Public Library. In Europe notable collections are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Ditchling Museum, Sussex, Eng.; the Holburne of Menstrie Museum, Bath, Eng.; and the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Ger.