January 2017 Exhibition now on at Appleby TIC

Our January 2017 exhibition is now on at Appleby Tourist Information Centre. With Lakeland Calligraphy as our theme all our pieces focus on Cumbria, The Lakes, Herdwick Sheep and local poets.

Below are a few snapshots to enjoy - but they are much better seen in person!

Onward and Upwards

Well, we have not gone ahead with our Herdwick sheep for the Calvert Trust which has been hugely disappointing with the work that Terry and Margaret had put into the project so far - a difference of opinion on the materials we would be using stopped us from proceeding.

But - you can't keep creativity down and we have decided to go ahead with the Herdwick calligraphy ideas and use this as the theme for our next exhibitions in late 2016 / spring 2017.

Once all dates and places are confirmed I'll post the details.

We also decided today to plan another couple of group outings - coming up at the end of this month at the Design Centre in Sunderland there is a Letter Exchange exhibition which we are keen to come and see. Later in the year the SSI are holding a 95th Anniversary exhibition at York Minster called Divine Inspiration which should be another great day out to look forward too.

Our first tutor workshop isn't planned until June - with John Ward coming to visit us. John has been a regular tutor for a number of years now and is always great fun - and he brings sweets! So that gives us the next few meetings to carry on with our Herdwick project and see where the ideas take us.

It's been a while since I've been on any other residential or weekend courses but other members in the group are still very active in going on workshops in the UK, or abroad. Last weekend Dr Manny Ling was teaching at Higham Hall so a couple of the group had attended the weekend and I've popped a picture below written by Manny - Walnut Ink with red acrylic dropped into the wet ink.

Go Herdwick - 40th anniversary of the Calvert Trust

We're pleased to be involved with the Go Herdwick public art trail that is in celebration of 40 years of the Calvert Trust.

We have our sheep design submitted and hope to have a sponsor secured this week. 

At our AGM meeting today we've been busy developing the layout and colour scheme, along with working out who in the group is doing what - with 13 members that takes a bit of doing

For more information please visit www.goherdwick.co.uk 

Small Roman Miniscules with Susan Moor - April 2014

Yesterday was our April meeting and we had a fantastic workshop with Susan Moor looking at the script she is so well known for. Based in the northeast, Susan was artist in residence at St Peters anglo saxon church in Sunderland and has produced an amazing volume of work which she is binding together at the moment.

As with our last tutor workshop we had extra visitors, Janice, Helen & Lyn, plus a previous member, Heather. The script uses a pointed nib and pressure release to get the subtle thick/thin lines. We spent the first part of the session just focusing on getting the right letter shapes before adding the pressure/release to our strokes. It's a very delicate script and it takes a lot of practice to get the balance and flow right - although we only had one day with Susan we each managed a rough layout of some text to show at the end. I can see a few of our group will be practising this script again in our next meeting.

Below are some photos from the day, and a couple of spreads that Susan has done for St Peters Church.

Update on 2014 workshops

It's been far too long since I've posted on our blog... but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy!

We had a lovely second half of 2013 - In October we had Marlene Grey come as our guest tutor to hold a workshop on Uncials. A favourite script of ours and one that was nice to get back to basics with. We had three visitors come to the session also from other groups, Helen, Janice and Lyn. It's always good to get a few additional people along to bolster the numbers and it shows that calligraphers will travel to us for a good workshop!

Our November and December meetings were the usual in-house follow up and christmas celebrations, along with a bit of planning for 2014.

A few of our members had visited the Letters after Lindisfarne exhibition also so I've posted a few of those pictures below which have been created by various calligraphers from around the UK. Susan Moor is in the process of binding these pages together and I'll have an update on that in the next post.

Requiem for the Printed Word - exhibition at Florence Mine, Egremont

Last month we provided calligraphy to an exhibition on at Florence Mine in Egremont, a few photos are below of the work we did and some of the other exhibits. All based around a Cumbrian theme and word related!

Carolingian Workshop - with Angela Dalleywater

Our May workshop was a tutor day with Angela Dalleywater

This was Angela's first visit to our group and it was a real treat to welcome her to Penrith. We spent the day looking at Carolingian lettering - an Eighth Century script and the first to fully use minuscules. It's place as one of the most important script developments is well deserved however nowadays it does seem to have taken a back seat in workshops to the the more popular Italic, Gothic and Uncial hands.

It's a beautiful looking script, developing from the roman half-uncial and it has a natural elegance to it with extended ascenders and descenders.

Angela Dalleywater, above, pointing out some of the particular strokes used to create the letters

examples of Angel's work

The last image above shows some of my lettering practice sheets along with the hand-out provided by Angela that we used for reference. 

April 2013 - Visit to Carlisle Archive Office and Cathedral

For our April meeting we had planned a trip to the new archive office in Carlisle to look at some of the oldest manuscripts they keep, followed by a group lunch in the town centre and an afternoon tour around Carlisle Cathedral.

Below are some of the stunning documents from the archive office, the oldest of which dates back to the 1200's.