Old English Calligraphy Alphabet

Calligraphy is a style of writing using the letters of the alphabet that has been used for centuries, starting with the Caveman, then the Monks of the Catholic Church, and into the decline of literary reforms during the humanistic revival of the Renaissance in the early 9th century. Calligraphy gives the look of vertical strokes of ink that end on the baseline; it uses angular lines instead of the fluent circles and curves of the letters we are most familiar with.

Old English Font is also referred to as Black Letter, Gothic Script, or Old English Script. Old English calligraphy was used in the Bible issued at Mainz in 1456 EB Inc., which featured 42 lines. This style of calligraphy alphabet was used by the Latin Christendom for handwriting for about 500 years, this form continued into the early 9th century until the humanistic revival of the Renaissance.

One way to distinguish Old English calligraphy is by the uniform vertical strokes that end on the baseline and the calligraphy lines are angular instead of smooth circles and curves, and the overlapping of convex forms so that they lie back to back.

After the invention of the printing press, the two major calligraphy styles that were used for typography were the Old English and the Roman. The Old English was used in the only existing work of the so-called 42-line Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenber. Over time, the Roman calligraphy was considered more suitable by humanists. Europe preferred the Old English calligraphy, whereas Germany, ruled by Hitler at that time, ordered that it be discontinued. The Old English calligraphy was used in the 20th century mainly for writing on Christmas cards, diplomas, and liturgical writings.

In medieval Italy used a black-letter script known as Littera moderna. The Littera antica was another calligraphy script that was used, developed by the humanists during the Renaissance period. The commercial centres of Italy during the 16th century used the Littera a mechanti script, developed during the late medieval time.

The most formal of the Old English calligraphy alphabet style is the German Fraktur, which is noticeable by its heavily bodied and extremely pointed letters. You can find examples of this in some of the earlier printings of letters of indulgences printed in Mainz, Germany in 1454. Next came the Schwabacher form, this being less pointed, rounded, less heavy-bodied, and by and large a bit more informal. Schwabacher evolved slowly over time and was used as a major for of cursive known as semi-italic.

During the 15th century the modernist “Lorenzo Valla” called the Old English calligraphy scripts Gothic. The black-letter scripts were rejected by many modernists because they were associated with the Middle Ages, which many modernists considered to be a conflict with their standards of the Classical age.

Today the Old English calligraphy alphabet can be found on many things. Wedding invitations, business cards, business logos, billboards, Christmas and birthday cards, and many forms of artwork, it is a form of calligraphy that will never die.

How to Master the Calligraphy Style of Writing

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