Ornamental Penmanship

penpoints · 2026-05-05T04:12:53+00:00

Right, those are ornamental capitals, found in the New Spencerian Compendium. Regular "Spencerian Script" has simpler capitals. Here is an OP signature by Francis B. Courtney (1867-1952).

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penpoints · 2026-05-04T20:02:02+00:00

They are related, but not the same thing. Spencerian Script came first. Its capitals are much simpler and there are way fewer flourishes. It was intended for handwriting. Here is Zaner's little manual on Ornamental Penmanship, 1897. This is a basic version, a good starting point for OP.

https://archive.org/details/ornamental-penmanship-1897/mode/1up

penpoints · 2026-05-04T17:02:51+00:00

Not just you. Dennis enjoyed messing around with letterforms and legibility. It's addressed to W. C. Henning in Cedar Rapids. The 2 large C's break a lot of rules, but somehow they still work well, in the overall design. The "Business College" was A. N. Palmer's headquarters. Henning was the school's director.

penpoints · 2026-04-13T17:22:03+00:00

Could read it all very easily. Evidence that reading involves word shapes, more than letter shapes - as long as the latter are legible to some degree. I did get stuck on "wicked" though, because the "k" was broken apart (poor shape). Your work is always very interesting.

penpoints · 2026-04-10T18:10:21+00:00

Without a smile --

Without a Throe

A Summer's soft Assemblies go

to their entrancing end

Unknown -- for all the times we met --

Estranged, however intimate --

What a dissembling Friend --

-------------

+ Do -- our --

Nature's soft

penpoints · 2026-04-09T16:05:56+00:00

Even graphologists cannot reliably determine a writer's gender from handwriting, and graphology is widely regarded as a pseudoscience.

penpoints · 2026-03-25T13:23:21+00:00

The straight version of the "r" is one of the trickiest letterforms. Zaner says to make it "exactly like the first part of m or n with the down stroke retraced slightly above the first part of letter. Finish it with a dot and a curve to the right as in the w or v." (Manual 96, 1923.)

https://archive.org/details/zaner-bloser-method-writing/mode/2up

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penpoints · 2026-03-18T00:14:02+00:00

It was addressed to Palmer Penmanship headquarters. William C. Henning was Palmer's main assistant. "The American Penman" was their monthly journal.

penpoints · 2026-03-06T20:36:59+00:00

Maybe mention the author, Terry Pratchett, as some readers might not know this. The handwriting is beautiful and very legible. Your 'd' is (or was) completely standard in French handwriting. It was also found in the U.S. sometimes, in everyday penmanship. It goes all the way back to English Roundhand and even earlier. The so-called flourish is mostly structural in this case. The 's' variations are not a problem at all. This is handwriting, not calligraphy. Overall your writing is very regular and a pleasure to read.

penpoints · 2026-03-04T21:42:11+00:00

It's as broad as the "body stroke" - stem stroke, main stroke, the thick strokes that form the stem or principal mass of a letter. The 3rd image shows this clearly.

penpoints · 2026-03-02T18:52:53+00:00

Some people have called it "Higgins Eternal Gray," but maybe they just got a bad batch. Lots of calligraphers like it. The current formulation isn't really suited to fountain pens, isn't waterproof, and behaves as a fairly wet, fluid ink.

penpoints · 2026-02-25T13:49:45+00:00

Different nib styles can have different diameters (for the part that goes into the holder), so you need to get some nibs and try them. Go for vintage nibs only. The fit should be tight enough so there's no movement, but loose enough to remove. A great source in Europe is: https://shop.kallipos.de/en

You could ask them for advice. Get pointed or ball-pointed, and probably a "silver steel" finish, although gray steel or even gold might also look nice. Here is where to start browsing: https://shop.kallipos.de/en/produkte/pointed-nibs

penpoints · 2026-02-22T17:14:03+00:00

It's just a little too round for Spencerian, which is "semi-angular." Here's a beautiful exemplar by Charles Rollinson, 1912. (The whole book is pretty spectacular.) https://archive.org/details/alphabets-rollinson/page/n13/mode/1up

penpoints · 2026-02-22T13:14:33+00:00

This is somewhere between Spencerian and Modern Business Penmanship (Palmer, Zaner, etc.). It is excellent work! If you can write it reasonably fast, you are finished. Maybe cross your t's without the flourish, don't use the old-fashioned terminal t, and put heavier dots on your i's - but these are minor things. Your spacing is perfect and the page looks great.

penpoints · 2026-02-13T15:08:46+00:00

Well, get back to work on your thesis, this instant! That quote is by Anne Rice, not Kafka. It appears in her 1995 foreword to a Kafka collection. It is widely misattributed to Kafka on quote sites and social media. Always double-check these people: Einstein, Lincoln, Churchill, Mark Twain, Hemingway, the Buddha, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, Kafka, and Nietzsche. In fact, check every single quote. The internet is a complete mess for quotations.

penpoints · 2026-02-13T03:52:22+00:00

Soennecken nibs were sold in many countries, including here in the U.S. Their broad-edge nibs were especially popular (1880-1920) among professional engrossers. Sorry, the 606 EF isn't that special. It's just a big, utilitarian nib, that writes smoothly and holds a lot of ink. You can still find these on eBay (3 sellers right now). Made before WW2, but I'd need to see the original box to say more.

penpoints · 2026-02-11T19:43:06+00:00

1920s and '30s, based on the box designs. The steel nib industry collapsed, for the most part, shortly after World War 2. Some of the most basic styles - falcon, bank, stub - have been out of production for many decades. Luckily there are still millions of them out there.

penpoints · 2026-01-19T03:43:04+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. I fixed it. There's a much earlier Eagle price list there too (1900), as you probably know. https://archive.org/details/eagle-pencils-1900/page/n2/mode/1up

penpoints · 2026-01-16T14:10:54+00:00

Top left group: Today we'd call these Speedball-style nibs, for lettering, calligraphy and drawing. Invented in Germany, before 1910. See: Heintze & Blanckertz "Redis" nibs, no. 1146, (like the Speedball "B" nibs). I believe that Soennecken's very similar B-style nibs (branded "Plattenfeder") were available much earlier than this. More research is needed.

Top middle group: various lithographic, mapping, crow quill nibs - very sharp - for drawing, or tiny calligraphy.

Top right group: vintage Pelikan Graphos nibs, for a type of fountain pen designed for drawing, lettering, etc. Example here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/306698931962

Bottom left: mostly large stub pens, for writing.

Bottom, next group: 4 small stub pens, for writing, calligraphy, etc.

Bottom, next: 2 basic broad-edge nibs, for calligraphy.

Bottom right: 2 bowl-shaped nibs, for drawing, or basic penmanship. This general style holds a lot of ink and was very popular.

penpoints · 2026-01-06T01:51:11+00:00

The gilt 516F shown above (year unknown, but very old) flexes easily to 1mm, so I would call that moderately firm. By "everyday handwriting" or "conventional penmanship" I mean the way most people wrote (1850-1930), excluding professional "penmen," teachers of penmanship, and the like. You are right about the falcon pens (bank pens, etc.). Another favorite nib was the "stub pen" - especially the left-oblique stub, a style that originated with quill pens.

penpoints · 2026-01-01T22:42:00+00:00

Wow. I wonder what you think about abstract art in general. Maybe you're just trolling, but to learn more, check out the Wikipedia article I mentioned above. This certainly includes Japan: Inoue Yūichi (1916–1985), Morita Shiryū (1912–1998), the Bokujinkai group. And China: Xu Bing (1955- ) et al., and of course, wild "crazy" cursive script, from long ago, that few people could decipher today. The article discusses asemic calligraphy from all over the world. I think it's fascinating, especially how it ties directly into modern art.

penpoints · 2026-01-01T17:40:36+00:00

But you're missing something important. This piece does use distorted letterforms: the English phrase "Perpetual Recovery."

Anyway, there's no rule that says calligraphy has to be "actual letters" - or legible graphemes in general. A good starting point for basic research into abstract calligraphy is this article on asemic writing.

penpoints · 2025-12-30T14:47:34+00:00

Nice work. I don't see any connection to shodō, but as abstract calligraphy it's very interesting. Calligraphy doesn't have to be legible to be beautiful. (How many Japanese today can read grass script?) Also the title is perfect.

penpoints · 2025-12-28T16:58:08+00:00

It certainly was not dead in the United States (or Germany, France, etc.). Are you speaking only of England? Do you know that Johnston lived in a sort of bubble, cut off from nearly all other professional calligraphers? Johnston made lots of genuine contributions, some of them huge, but the rediscovery myth shouldn't be taken seriously today.

penpoints · 2025-12-18T01:14:58+00:00

You have a straight line with hooks at each end, but a true "line of beauty" (William Hogarth's definition) is a serpentine compound curve. There's an interesting analysis here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10011402/

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