John Baskerville the Writing Master: Calligraphy and Type in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Submitting institution
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University of Sunderland
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1118
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- John Baskerville: Art and Industry in the Enlightenment
- Publisher
- University of Liverpool Press
- ISBN
- 9781786940643
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/8986/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In this book chapter Clayton demonstrates a close creative relationship that exists between calligraphy and type design through two centuries during which it has been usually been depicted as absent.
Clayton achieves this by setting the work of printer, type designer and writing master John Baskerville against the broad background of 17th and 18th century European calligraphy. He develops a suggestion first made by Beatrice Warde in 1927 that Baskerville’s letterforms owe a debt to the English writing master George Shelley. Clayton demonstrates how a déformation professionnelle within the Arts and Crafts movement meant this suggestion was never taken further.
Clayton’s research builds on a close study of the original papers of Ambrose Heal (1872-1959), author of The English Writing-Masters and their Copy-Books (1931) and on first hand consultation of original 17th and 18th century European writing manuals in the V&A and British Library in London; the Harrison Collection and Letterform Archive in San Francisco.
With the example of Baskerville in mind a new reading of type design history is proposed with calligraphy as an agent for change throughout – even in the case of ‘Modern’ type that was once thought the antithesis of pen-made lettering.
Material from the chapter has been amplified in talks at Istype, Sabancı University, Istanbul 2017 and Typographics, Cooper Union, New York City, 2017. Both talks now appear on Vimeo.
As a result of his work Clayton was enabled to envision one unified field of research for the study of physical writing previously split into separate disciplines of palaeography, epigraphy, calligraphy, typography, document history, digital media and design. This approach helped shape his contribution as advisor and catalogue editor for Writing: Making your Mark, an exhibition at the British Library in 2019 spanning 40 writing systems and over 5500 years of history.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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