The history of calligraphy is a long one and goes back to the very origin of the written word. For as long as people have been able to read and write, they’ve been finding ways to make their writing look beautiful.
The word calligraphy literally means “beautiful writing“, based on the Greek words kalyos and graphein. Although calligraphy contains the word for writing, it’s not quite the same as ordinary writing — it’s an art form that’s composed rather than written.
Let’s take a moment to peek into calligraphy history and trace the origins and developments of this beautiful hobby. On our journey through the story of calligraphy, we’ll go from the scribes in ancient Egypt and China before looking at the Middle East and medieval Europe.
We’ll watch as calligraphy changes from ancient times into the modern art that we know and love today.
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The origins of calligraphy are somewhat shrouded in mystery since it’s connected to the origin of writing. In its most basic form, writing is using symbols to record an existing language. When we look at writing in this way, the oldest examples of recorded language are found in ancient Egypt.
Over the years, older objects covered in abstract symbols have been discovered in ancient China but it’s unclear whether they’re a form of writing or just decorations.
In order to find the origins of calligraphy, the closest we can get is to look at the three parts of the world that invented their own writing styles: Ancient Mesopotamia, China and Latin America.
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When you look at the history of writing, it’s impossible not to be amazed by how old it is. With the earliest texts going back to the fourth millennium BCE, people have been writing for more than 5,000 years!
Mesopotamian cuneiform (example below) and the more famous hieroglyphics from Egypt are contenders for the prize of the world’s oldest writing.
In ancient Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, writing was in the hands (pun intended) of a group of professional scribes.
An exhibit about Egyptian scribes in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens says this about ancient scribes: “Particularly popular and lucrative, the scribe’s profession was mostly hereditary. Scribes had careers in the government, priesthood, and army. Scribes wrote on stone or clay sherds, wooden boards, linen, papyrus, and parchment.”
Life as a scribe was good! You didn’t have to pay taxes nor could you be drafted into the army.
Furthering demonstrating the value of writing, ancient Egypt had “protectors of writing:”
The earliest scripts consisted of a large number of different signs that you had to learn by heart.
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Did you know the ancient Egyptians had a form of cursive script? It’s called hieratic and it was mainly used for normal correspondence: (image source)
When we compare this form of cursive with writing found on the walls of royal tombs and temples, we can see that the writing becomes a lot more detailed and even artistic. (image source)
From the earliest beginnings, there was a clear difference between beautiful writing and functional writing. People tried a little harder when knew they were writing for posterity. Rather than the fast cursive style, scribes and artists chose a more formal writing style for inscriptions that were meant to last.
Is this formal style a form of calligraphy? The scholars are still out on that one. What do you think?
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While the Middle East can lay claim to the origin of writing, some of the oldest established calligraphy traditions are actually found in Asia.
When Buddhist missionaries traveled through Asia to spread their religion, they introduced the art of writing and calligraphy. To this day, calligraphy is still closely linked to Buddhist practices.
Across most of Asia, calligraphy quickly came to be regarded as the most supreme form within the visual arts. Taking their inspiration from nature, ancient calligraphers tried to incorporate harmony and balance to create works of beautiful writing and imagery.
It is in the calligraphic art of ancient China that we find the origin of paper as well as many other tools that we still use today. (image source)
The earliest Chinese symbols and signs were scratched on bones and tortoise shells. While the oldest examples may not truly represent writing, they were certainly carefully composed before they were carved.
In an early Chinese inscription, letters were often part of the decorations and as a result, had to be meticulously written. The result was a writing style that aimed for perfection in beauty, balance and legibility.
Eventually, the tools used to scratch signs and symbols on tortoise shells gave way to Chinese ink brushes and writing on paper. Artists recognized that the brush, paper’s water absorption, density of the ink and other factors all had a hand in the final result of the work.
Although Asia may have been the first part of the world to develop a tradition of calligraphic art, it wasn’t the only one. (image source)
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Mesoamerica is the third place in the world that independently invented some kind of writing system with the earliest writing going back to the first millennium BCE.
Like writing found in ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican writing was used to both provide monument inscriptions as well as books.
While there were once many books, the Spanish conquerors sadly destroyed most of them and only a handful remain.
These days, you can see detailed examples of Mayan writing such as the one below in many archeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala.
Looking at the signs, you can see how each sign consists of different elements that have been arranged to form a small square.
In the Americas, the art of writing wasn’t as widespread as it was in Asia or Europe. While there were many cultures in Central America that had writing, the same cannot be said for South America.
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The truth is, nobody knows. You won’t find actual books though because in the cultures of the Andes, they recorded things in a very different way.
In many museums in South America, you can see something called a Khipu (sometimes spelled Quipu). Since the Khipus haven’t been deciphered yet, it’s unclear whether they are examples of actual writing or whether they’re just lists of numbers and transactions. (image source)
Instead of using a pen and paper, a Khipu uses a system of knots and chords to record information. A special class of “scribes” were able to interpret the different knots as well as chords of different colors and materials.
Although sites like Machu Picchu show that South America certainly had its fair share of advanced civilizations, it probably never saw a complete writing system.
Unlike Chinese, Arab and Roman calligraphy, the art of Mesoamerican writing seems to have all but disappeared.
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After the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, Islam became the dominant religion in the Middle East. This new religion gave rise to a very distinct and beautiful calligraphy style.
Middle Eastern calligraphy, sometimes also called Islamic calligraphy, is intimately connected to Islam and often depicts verses of the Quran in the Arabic language.
Since calligraphy combines art and religion, it’s not surprising that it quickly became the most venerated form of visual art. Looking at the Arabic alphabet, it’s not hard to see how you can turn the written word into fine art pieces!
This example of geometric Islamic art from the Alhambra in Spain shows how in an Islamic inscription, letters are often part of the decoration.
Although Islamic calligraphy tends to be in the same language, there’s a lot of variation in the different styles and scripts that are used.
Whereas many writing styles such as Kufic follow a strong geometric style, a Persian script like Nas’taliq incorporates a more natural style of flowing curves.
The world of Arabic calligraphy is a rich one where many of the classical Persian calligraphy scripts remain popular to this day.
Fun fact: In Dubai, the exterior of the Museum of The Future in decorated in calligraphy. We love this poetic connection between the past and the future.
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We have finally arrived at the calligraphy that we know and love; western calligraphy. Just to be clear, western calligraphy to us means any lettering style that uses the Latin alphabet.
You’re likely most familiar with Western calligraphy, which is recognizable because of its use of the traditional Latin alphabet. Romans wrote on long rolls of paper using reed or quill pens that were dipped in ink, and later Christian churches used Western calligraphy to copy Biblical texts.
Calligraphy in the Western world didn’t really take off until the introduction of Christianity. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any calligraphy before that though! Since people spoke Latin, it’s not surprising that we can find the origin of Western calligraphy in ancient Rome.
Since we use the Latin alphabet, all of the calligraphy here at Loveleigh Loops is Western calligraphy. Like all calligraphy classifications, “Western calligraphy” is a large umbrella term that encompasses many different styles and scripts.
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To this day, Rome is filled with columns, triumphal arcs and statues that all bear inscriptions written in Latin. The Romans loved their monuments!
In fact, they loved them so much that they invented a special script for it called Roman Capitals, or Square Capitals, where every letter was supposed to occupy a “square” of identical size.
They also paid a lot of attention to the look of their inscriptions. Looking at the letters, can you see that the ones in the first line are slightly bigger than the lower ones? This is to make all letters appear of identical size to someone looking at them from below.
Romans were aware of the forced perspective in which their art would be viewed; they “corrected” for the curvature of the human eye. (image source)
While we might see interpret it as shouting in all caps, they must have seen it as a fancier version of everyday cursive writing.
Weirdly enough, they never bothered to use any spacing in their writing. That was about to change though!
During the dark ages of the 6th and 7th centuries, people wrote in all kinds of styles and scripts. As a result, the standard of hand lettering went down and books (and more importantly legal documents) became harder and harder to read.
In the 9th century, the French King Charlemagne decided to bring some order to the chaos and set out to create a standardized system of education and a new and simplified writing style to be taught to a wider public. (image source)
For the first time, the monks and scribes in his kingdom started using punctuation as well as upper and lowercase letters for documents and the result was a popular writing style that was very easy to read.
In fact, it became so popular that early type designers based their script on the Carolingian lowercase letters when the printing press came around!
Although Carolingian letters are easy to read, they take up quite a bit of space on the page. This was during a time when producing paper was a costly affair.
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As a result of education reform, more and more people could read. As more universities were founded, the demand for books went up. With it came the need for a script that was easy to read and to produce en masse.
The writing style that we know called Gothic script was the solution to all of these problems. Eventually, steel nibs were invented to replace feather quills. They were more convenient to use because you didn’t have to cut and sharpen a new quill, plus they lasted a lot longer. (image source)
Gothic script also meant that books were cheaper to produce. Letters are easy to read but tend to be written more closely together. Just compare this example of Gothic script to its Carolingian predecessor to see how much more you could fit on a single page.
We’ve almost arrived at the calligraphy that we know and love. After the Middle Ages, people suddenly became more aware that interesting stuff had happened before their lifetimes, especially in the classical civilizations of ancient Rome and Greece.
There was a renewed interest in the works of ancient Rome and this led to a script called the humanist minuscule. For the first time, there is a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, inspired by the Carolingian script and Roman capitals. (image source)
Can you see how finally, there’s a script that’s easy to read even for us? That’s because this script was the inspiration of many modern typefaces!
With books becoming more and more affordable, more and more people learned how to read. However, it wasn’t long until there was a reaction to all of this.
Weirdly enough, the invention of the printing press led to a renewed interest in penmanship and handwritten texts.
Despite all the mass-production, a printing press couldn’t reproduce the look of handwritten texts. Simple things like connecting one letter to the other of adding flourished letters was too difficult and too time-consuming.
Calligraphers developed styles such as the popular Copperplate style that highlighted all the traits that were unique to handwritten texts. They even found a way in which it could be reproduced … but not by a printing press!
To reproduce the handwritten work of scribes, an engraver would instead carve the strokes onto metal plates used for printing. The plates were made of copper–which is where the name Copperplate calligraphy comes from. Watch us write with a Pointed Pen in the Copperplate style below.
We’ve added some flourishes to make it look extra captivating. Eventually the invention of printing caused fewer works of calligraphy to be published, but it has since seen a revival in hobbies and business alike.
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In almost every style we have looked at so far, there has been an emphasis on rules with a right way and often a very clear wrong way of writing.
With the most popular contemporary style of calligraphy, simply called modern calligraphy, all this comes to an end. There are so many different styles of calligraphy that it’s difficult to define “modern calligraphy,” but to name a few:
What unites these styles is that they don’t necessarily conform to traditional rules. This allows you to play around with variations that make it your own.
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Brush lettering is different from traditional handwriting because it uses more contrast between different strokes in each letter. It plays off of traditional and faux calligraphy, which is why it’s so important to learn those basic strokes before learning how to break the rules.
Let us show you some of the basic strokes of brush lettering in the video below. You’ll also learn more about the history of where the strokes came from:
Calligraphy is becoming more and more popular. Gone are the days when calligraphy was only reserved for the elite. Like most major art styles, calligraphy is practiced by hobbyists and professional calligraphers alike.
Although modern brush lettering is the most popular contemporary style of calligraphy, it’s easy to find contemporary artists for any of the more traditional styles. We are huge advocates of the traditional Copperplate and Spencerian styles, as well as the modern scripts.
Are you interested in becoming a modern scribe? We would love to teach you calligraphy here at Loveleigh Loops. This ancient practice is alive and well, and we have tons of free worksheets and video tutorials to help you get started.
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