Learning to write

What a beautiful place...  Up the drive we drove and were greeted by a mansion with a large porch and a setting to die for - what a place for a course.  West Dean College in Sussex is just perfect for a calligraphy course - you must go and take one of their many courses in an enormous range of subjects just to experience the house, views, gardens and courses.

We settled in on Friday evening and met all the others on the course - 12 in all and the tutor Gaynor Goff.  After dinner she gave an overview of calligraphy and what we would be learning the next day.  Sadly not Copperplate but a choice of either Uncial or Foundation .  If we worked hard she would let us start the Italic hand.

Saturday morning began at 8.45am in the College art shop for those who needed bits and pieces and we added to our collection, too.  Lessons started at 9am and with breaks and meals (very good food by they way!) you could carry on until 10pm at night.

It's strange (depending on one's age) how one doesn't remember how difficult it was to learn to write when a child.  As an adult learning a new script it was a real challenge and very rewarding, if rather frustrating! 

After dinner, on the second evening, when lessons had finished but the tutor was available to help and demonstrate writing in colour and dusting our beautifully (?) written quotes with chalks in rainbow colours, I asked Gaynor is she would look at a couple of the Brandauer pens I had with me.  One or two were not suitable for the scripts we were learning but one from the Clan series was perfect.  To watch a calligrapher writing with a Brandauer pen was quite amazing and then Gaynor used a different one to write in Copperplate which was a real treat.  To see something that is generally viewed as old-fashioned in the hands of a master creating perfectly formed letters with a Brandauer product will be something I shall always remember.

On the final day of the course I wrote using a Brandauer Clan series nib and was able to write in bright colours - pink, red, blue and purple.  What fun it was to write with a pen produced by my ancestors - though they probably didn't write in such crazy paint colours!

The weekend course was an inspiration and when you see what can be created by modern calligraphers it makes one want to learn more.  The course flew by as we practised our alphabets and slowly and carefully my Brandauer pen created words, phrases and meaning across the paper.

Go on - have a go...

Buying pen nibs

So, we needed to buy nibs for the calligraphy course and the art shop nearest to us is A Boville Wright Ltd - so that was our destination.

In we go to this wonderful shop full of coloured sheets of paper, card, paint, ink, crayons, felt tips, pen nibs. The lady who helped us (I think the manageress) was brilliant and when we showed her the list of things we needed she retrieved a wooden box about 18" by 10" with a glass lid from the counter for us. In the box were various nibs with each section labelled and would you believe it one labelled - wait for it ... Brandauer! I couldn't believe my eyes, a compartment in the box labelled Brandauer. How incredible was that? However, I should add that the compartment had Leonardt pens in it, the one that they make that was originally a Brandauer pen.

We had such fun selecting the Leonardt nibs we required for the calligraphy course, one of each width, along with a pen holder (rather more colourful than they would have been in the 19th century), and choosing a small number of colourful paints, mixing dish, eraser, A3 paper and much more that were on a long list from the course administrator.  What a fabulous bag of goodies we came home with from our visit to A. Boville Wright Ltd and so excited about the course the following weekend.

My mind was busy thinking about the copperplate script I was going to start studying and learning more about the Brandauer pens I had decided to take with me to show the calligrapher presenting the course...