Book Arts Tuesday/Letter Arts Review

I was so excited to get a copy of Letter Arts Review in the mail yesterday with my article on making books with children that I had to feature it here. It is beautifully designed by the Editor and Designer Christopher Calderhead who so graciously invited me to send the article and lots of photos for illustrations. I think the best way to represent the magazine is to show you a page and short paragraph of each of the long and in-depth articles. I'll start with a quote from mine which is my personal story of the development of my teaching children in schools.

From the beginning, I have always viewed the book as a vessel, a container for content. I was never as interested in the actual binding as I was with finding the most expressive form for my thoughts and ideas. Shortly after my journey into bookmaking began, I wrote the following:

Books are intimate; they welcome personal encounters.
Books are humble; they fulfill their potential closed as well as open.
Books have depth; they are rich with the possibilities of endless variation.
Books have spirit; they are dwelling places for our thoughts and feelings.


Seal Carving in Japan by Christine Flint-Sato

THE SECOND RULE: THE RULE OF COMPOSITION
The restricted space of the seal requires considerable design acumen and precision, but if successful, will embody the Chinese ideal of the seal as 'the world in a square inch'. For connoisseurs a seal will provide as much satisfaction as looking at a good piece of calligraphy or ink painting.


The Five Stages of Writing by Steven Skaggs

The problem with the issue of illegibility vs. legibility is that it depends on a false assumption: that writing is inherently linked with language. The falseness of this assumption isn't obvious; we often tend to think of writing as the jotting down, or notating of words. When writing is framed in this way as a linguistic pursuit, the legibility dichotomy emerges with an almost moral force: legibility serves language, illegibility snuffs it, and therefore calligraphy that is illegible is less than legitimate. But the linguistic link hides a deeper and more fundamental connection: writing as a gestural, graphic activity. It is writing's graphic role, rather than its role as a linguistic notation, that opens new vistas for us visual artists.


Wissam Shawkat by Elinor Holland

But recognition is not the goal for Wissam. As he says of himself, he started as a calligrapher and arrived as an artist. As calligraphers we too need to recognize ourselves as artists and continue to press on in the evolution of our art form. He is very wary of using the term "craft" in this discussion. Craft is all to often used to belittle the art of lettering, and Wissam sees calligraphy as a fine art no matter what culture it comes from. He feels that all arts—music, sculpture. architecture—are continuing to develop and evolve.

The cover artist is Yukimi Annand.

Subscriptions to Letter Arts Review as well as individual issues are available from John Neal Bookseller.