Customer Reviews

Celtic Hand Stroke by Stroke: Irish Half-Uncial from The Book of Kells

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This book seems to me slightly misnamed. If you're looking for a book that describes the hand(s) used in the Book of Kells (i.e. a book on paleography rather than calligraphy), this book isn't it. Let me 'splain.

When I first started learning the celtic hand, after some early exercises (from Margaret Shepherd's excellent book "Learn Calligraphy") I decided I'd follow historical precedent and learn more accurate Book of Kells hands. (This worked well for me in Gothic capitals, for example.) So I attempted to start by copying the Book of Kells hand; whereupon I ran into my first problem: the original had 3 different scribes with different styles. So, I picked one.

My results were disappointing. After doing my best to exactly copy the hand, I found my lettering looked less "Celtic" than typical Celtic writing! For, despite the fact that the Book of Kells is considered the prototypical example of celtic celligraphy, enigmatically the hands used in the Book are actually not very "Celtic looking", at least to my modern eyes.

Thus, I modified my style to be more "modern" - more like the style described in this book, in fact, which brings me back around to the book. This book gives a brief history of the Book of Kells and then uses the Book's hands as a starting point to develop a celtic script that is very nice. Many aspects of this hand were not used (or not used extensively) in the Book of Kells - for example, the angled upper serifs. But it is a very nice-looking (to me) hand, very celtic-looking, and truer to the Book of Kells hands than most other celtic calligraphy I've seen. Well worth the small price.

A book very useful for calligrapher, specifically interested who want to understand the correct way to produce celtic writing. It is a good starting point to reach the personal style. Tricky informations are also given for the correct way to "turn the nib" in order to obtain the beginnig and final correct sign of each letter.

I'd save my money on this one. There are other books with a lot better instruction.

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