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| Lettering project inspired by the Bergling book |
For most of us, hand lettering is reserved for sentimental or ceremonial occasions, such as this announcement that I made for my son's graduation party.
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Continued from Part 2) But in the Golden Age of Ornamental Penmanship, which lasted between about 1875-1915, every business person was expected to convey their integrity and confidence by means of their pen skills, culminating in a confidant, flourished signature. To achieve this kind of writing, penmanship instructors stressed the importance of good posture.
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| Correct and incorrect writing position |
First the pen artist must take the proper position, either standing at a podium lectern or seated in a straight chair with both feet flat on the floor, the back held straight. The pen is held, not in the tight grip of most beginners, but rather in a relaxed hold, the arm resting lightly on the table on the large muscle below the elbow.
“Whole arm” or “off hand” capitals, with their elaborate looping flourishes, are made without penciling the letterforms in advance. Their flowing grace requires a great deal of practice. They are formed with broad movements of the arm, swinging easily from the shoulder. Fingers, wrist, and arm cooperate to create fluid movements. Each part of the flourish uses a smooth continuous stroke. By contrast, small letters should be rhythmically created with controlled finger movements.
Ideally these scripts should be executed on a smooth cotton rag paper over lightly ruled guidelines drawn with a hard pencil. The slant of the letters should be absolutely uniform. The slant can be ruled lightly with an adjustable triangle set to a fixed slope and resting on a T-square or parallel rule.
Most scripts require a slant of between 52 and 54 degrees from horizontal, or the 3/4 angle diagrammed below. An oblique pen holder angles the nib to the right, allowing a better wrist position.
In settings where script writing needs to be larger and more precisely considered, it can be constructed by drawing the letters first in outline, and then filling them in with a brush or pen. In general it is a good idea for the student to begin constructing letters larger and at a slow speed. With improving skill, the execution typically becomes smaller in scale and more rapid. It is advisable to try for accuracy and quality first, and then for speed.
The pen-based script alphabets, with their German and French variants, derive from the models produced by engravers in the eighteenth century, requiring the artist to incise a series of fine lines into a copper plate with a sharpened steel tool called a burin. This copperplate engraver’s alphabet can also be constructed with the flexible steel pen nib. Each weighted or “shaded” stroke broadens on the pulling downstroke. Whichever tool is used, this thick-and-thin copperplate style is slow to execute, making it more suitable for headings and superscriptions than for everyday handwriting.
Bergling includes broad pen alphabets familiar to modern calligraphers, such as “Blackstone,” “Mixed Roman Text,” and the single-stroke Roman and Italic alphabets. Informal round-tipped alphabets can be achieved with a
Speedball “Style B” pen nib.
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Series on J.M. Bergling and the Golden Age of Penmanship
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
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You can get a signed copy of Bergling from my website store (with your name nicely lettered if you want. Send me an email after you order it explaining how you'd like the dedication.)
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Here's where you can get the Dover book on Amazon. You can also still find
a vintage copy on Amazon.
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(Part 4 of this series tomorrow.)
Spectrum is the annual book collection of contemporary fantastic art. The 26th edition has arrived, and here's a flip-through. (Video on Facebook).
By the time Bergling’s books appeared, typewriters had already been standardized and were coming into common use for business communications. Fountain pens and then ballpoint pens became established by mid century. The Golden Age of Ornamental Penwork was disappearing. Hopefully with the aid of this treasury, a new generation of designers can rediscover artistic lettering and adapt it to contemporary uses.
Most traditional alphabets have a consistent distribution of thick and thin lines. Typically, letterforms are drawn with greater thickness on the vertical ascender, compared to the horizontal crossbar, a byproduct of pen technique. Novel effects can be achieved by using a constant thickness throughout the letter or by reversing the normal relationship of thick and thin lines, .
J. M. Bergling was an authority in many different disciplines of lettering. As a boy he emigrated with his father from Sweden, working in California and Chicago, where he built his early reputation as an engraver for watch cases and jewelry. 
applications where a graceful elegance is required. The Spencerian alphabet was invented by Platt Rogers Spencer (1800-1864). It became standard in the United States between 1850 and 1925, after which it was replaced by the simpler Palmer method that still is taught in schools today. 
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My first freelance work was as a calligrapher when I was in junior high school. I found clients by riding my bicycle to print shops and showing them my samples. I lettered a lot of wedding invitations and menus. My go-to source for alphabets and styles was an old book called Art Alphabets and Lettering that my Mom owned when she was young.
The exhibition includes over 50 drawings and it will be on view through January 12.
Roger Fry said that the public acceptance of Impressionism owed much to the pioneering work of M. Bastien-Lepage. Monet's popularity, he said, "required the teaching of men like Bastien-Lepage, who cleverly compromised between the truth and an accepted convention of what things looked like, to bring the world gradually around to admitting truths which a single walk in the country with purely unbiased vision would have established beyond doubt."
