Illumination and Its Development in the Present Day

by Sidney Farnsworth

A page of well-formed lettering makes good pattern, and is not merely pattern, as it serves also the purpose for which it was intended, viz., to be read.

It is when he has gained the mastery of the pen, in making well-formed letters with good arrangement on the page, that the student may consider that he has well started on the road to the production of good illumination.

For the construction of well-finished lettering it is essential that a mastery of the tool and materials employed should be acquired. It is when the pen becomes almost a part of the writer, so that he is able to concentrate all his energy on the writing, giving scarcely any attention to the pen itself, that he may claim to be proficient in the use of the pen.

If there is one thing more than another that one feels when examining some of the best illuminated work of the past, it is that the writer was a master of the pen as a letter-making tool. He did his work well; his books were transcribed in a workmanlike manner, and the decoration which followed seems to come quite naturally from the writing itself.

It is for this reason that so much attention has been given to the use of the quill and reed pen in the formation of good writing.

Students are frequently at a disadvantage from inability to handle the pen properly. To help, in some measure, to remedy this, the student is shown how to make sharply-defined strokes before attempting to form letters. At the same time no particular manner of holding the pen has been insisted upon.

In the Introduction to his “Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,” Burke says: “I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.”

This has been the ideal that the present writer has tried to keep ever before him in writing the instructions that are given in the succeeding pages. His aim has been to direct the student in the right way, and then to encourage him to study the subject for himself. Whether he has been successful in this endeavour must be left for the reader to judge.

The study of calligraphy, in connection with illumination, ought to be helpful in making the ordinary handwriting more legible. Before the age of printing, the book-hand developed alongside of the ordinary cursive handwriting, and possibly the fact that the book-hand has been lost may be advanced as a reason why most of the handwriting to-day is so degenerate. A careful study of some of the fine models of book-hands of the past cannot but be beneficial. It will certainly enable the student to appreciate beautiful forms of lettering, and its influence should soon be apparent in the lettering in general use. This should result in better sign-writing, better lettering in our magazines and papers, in short, better lettering all round.

Undoubtedly it would be a good thing if the children in our schools could be taught to form some of the fine book-hands of the past with the quill pen. It is certainly, to a great extent, due to the lack of a practical knowledge of some of the splendid forms of lettering used in the past, that the general lettering in use at the present time is so bad. It ought not to be at all impracticable for this suggestion to be carried out.