Gillian Hazeldine is a Fellow of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators (SSI) and a Full Member of Letter Exchange. In this article, Jilly gives advice and tips on writing names in a memorial book.

Writing names in a memorial book and adding names to certificates are two of the most frequent calls on the calligrapher’s skills.

Memorial books are important as they not only record someone’s birth and death, but it is also a comfort to the bereaved to be able to see their relatives’ names written nicely for posterity.

If you are fortunate enough to be asked to start a memorial book from scratch, then you will need to consider the size of it, the paper you will use to make it, number of folios per section and then the design of title page and of the pages themselves. One of the books I do has several pages for a month; another simply records in chronological order. If you decide on the former, remember that it is a fact that more people die in the winter months than in the summer, so those pages fill up more quickly. If you are starting from scratch, it is a good idea to approach a bookbinder at the beginning and work with them, so that there are no nasty surprises at the handing over of the pages.

Off the shelf Memorial Books

Most memorial books are bought off the shelf by church or parish councils and presented to the calligrapher.  If this is your experience, the first thing you need to do is to go to the back of the book and take a sample of the paper. Slice out a whole page carefully with a scalpel (and a cutting mat underneath the page!), leaving at least 20mm of the page at the spine. If this loose flap bothers you, glue it down with some PVA, with a protective sheet underneath the flap and glueing from the spine out with a brush. Check that there is no excess on the edge, press the flap firmly down, close the book and leave to dry with another piece of protective paper inserted.

Test the paper for ink, paint, how it reacts to a rubber being used on it and very importantly, whether you can erase successfully. Quite often the paper used in these shop bought books is Goatskin parchment, which, although not the nicest paper, is perfectly okay to write on and does allow erasure.

Ink

The ink you use is important; shop-bought inks are aniline dyes and are likely to fade with time. You need to be using Chinese ink or Sumi, whichever you prefer. I prefer to grind ink for every job, but you can buy bottled Chinese or Sumi ink. This may need some dilution.

You can use gouache; Lamp Black is a good dense colour and if the paper in the book has a tendency to bleed with ink, then gouache is the answer.

The books I do use black and a colour; red in the case of my local memorial books, green in the case of the one I do for Brantwood, Ruskin’s home. Gouache is the only option for colour in books. Don’t use coloured inks. They are thin, transparent and have a tendency to blob. If there is a call for gold (if you have taken over a book and gold has been used previously) then I would use shell gold, but it is very expensive now and you can buy some good quality gold gouache that will work, but won’t burnish.

Mix your gouache at least 12 hours before you are going to use it and before covering your palette with Clingfilm to keep dust out, add a drop of Gum Arabic. This is absolutely essential for writing in books. Without it gouache will have a tendency to offset (especially if a bookbinder is going to put the book in a press) and there is nothing worse than a ghost of your writing appearing on the facing page. Test that there is enough Gum Arabic in your paint by writing, letting the paint dry and then rubbing over it quite vigorously. Some colour will come off on the rubber, but if the paint doesn’t shift, there is enough. Too much will render the paint difficult to work with. To add just one drop, use the handle of a paintbrush, dip it a fair way into the fluid, extract it and then hold it over your paint so that the gum slides down the handle and you can control one drop into your mixture.

Ruling Up

Ruling up in a made book is quite tricky. You can either make dots either side of the page and join them up or you can use a ruler and set square. If you have several names to enter, double-check that your lines are accurate before you start writing. Lines of writing that slope either up or down are going to be very noticeable. Use a fairly hard, sharp pencil, an H or 2H and don’t press too hard on it so that the lines will erase afterwards. Try also to rule only where your writing will be.

I work on my sloped board with a strip of wood that is almost the width of my board and about 15mm high taped at the bottom so that the book sits on it without sliding around. Writing on the verso (left-hand) pages of a book until you are halfway through it is problematic because of the curve of the pages. I fold a piece of heavy blotting paper round the top of the pages and the front cover to protect them and use a bulldog clip over that so that the pages stay together and reasonably flat. Once more than halfway through the book it is the recto pages that are difficult and the same device works. On a thick book, to avoid putting too much pressure on the spine, you can use a piece of MDF the same width as the spine tucked underneath the cover up to the spine so that you are writing on a flat surface.

If you have started the book from scratch, you will have decided on the size of writing as part of your design. If you have to follow on from someone else, then you will have to match as nearly as possible their writing. If you are presented with a name that is simply too long for one line, take part of it on to the next. Don’t try to compress or change nib size to fit it on (although that was what Edward Johnston did).

Writing

Before you start writing, double-check the names and dates. I had a recent experience where my local vicar had copied down the dates wrongly and it was only as I wrote a date and thought ‘how odd, both these people had the same dates’ that I realised the mistake. I had got to the end of the birth in September before stopping and the correct date was May, so I had to do about an hour’s very careful erasing before using sandarac and rewriting.  Even the best erasure is visible, certainly to the trained eye, but better that than there being an inaccuracy.

If you have names and dates, names in black, dates in colour, do all the black writing first, making sure that each entry is absolutely dry before turning pages. Then go back and put in the dates.

When everything is completely dry, rub out your lines. Try not to rub over your writing; if your lines are fine and accurate enough, you can simply remove what shows between the letters with a sharpened ‘Click’ pencil eraser. Do not rub over your gouache as the eraser will burnish the gouache and you will have shiny stripes.

Needless to say, work when you have the time and the space to do the writing without distraction. Mistakes do happen, so you will need to be able to erase well, which needs another article!

Finally

Just finally: one of my students recently took on a job for a church to update their book and when the woman brought it to her, it was basically a lined accounts ledger and the previous entries were appallingly badly written. She was asked to follow the ‘style’ with the new entries.  She soldiered on and did a reasonable job and was paid for it. But in my view she should have said no to the work. There is absolutely no point in us as calligraphers striving to do good work if the people we work for have no appreciation whatsoever of the time it takes to become skilled and the time that it takes to enter names and dates in a memorial book. Don’t do work that is not valued.

Visit Gillian Hazeldine’s website to find out more.

13 Comments »

Our new Facebook cover photo was designed by Rachel Yallop. Whilst producing the cover picture, Rachel kindly agreed to make notes, to give us a better understanding of how a professional lettering artist approaches and creates such a lively and eye-catching piece of work.

I’ve recently rediscovered the Zig Art & Graphic Twin felt pen and have been experimenting quite a bit with it. It flows so perfectly, can be used at speed, manipulated with pressure and release and of course there’s no need for re-dipping in ink! I’ve found it works really well on marker paper though something a little more textured is also good.

I made the decision to write the Scribblers Calligraphy title in a free and lively style using the Zig pen. With little time to experiment, and being used to turning round commercial lettering very rapidly, I often have to make quick decisions about what will, and will not, work.

I rarely do roughs, finding it better to just start. I do think carefully about how the piece will look though, try to see it in my head and then on the paper.

The main considerations were the available space for the finished piece (proportions to a ratio of 100/35), whether to write the two words in the same style and how to tackle the double ‘b’. I find the best way to resolve double letters is to make them the same but different! So here there is a looped ascender on the first ‘b’ and an echoed looped finishing stroke on the second. I made the ascenders different, and the counter spaces although the same shape, are of a different size.

I decided that the two words written in the same way would take up too much room and as Scribblers was the most important word that should take priority. In writing Calligraphy in capital letters, I solved the problem of the ascenders and descenders taking up too much space. And the contrast between the flamboyant Scribblers script and the more restrained Calligraphy worked well.

I’m a great fan of white on black lettering: it has instant drama. Of course, with the Zig pen I couldn’t do that but with the help of photoshop, I could. Having written the two words to my satisfaction I scanned them each separately, inverting them (changing the black to white) in photoshop. I then opened a new blank page in the 100/35 proportions, dropped in the two words and played around with sizes.

I’m not particularly experienced in photoshop, but I do find it useful to alter the contrast after scanning an original piece of lettering, to crop images and perhaps invert them before emailing to the client. I don’t retouch using the computer. I always endeavour to write the piece perfectly first, or maybe 10^th time (!) but sometimes if a small adjustment needs to be made I thicken strokes with a fine pen or erase with good, old-fashioned, Tipp-Ex!

Visit Rachel Yallop’s website to find out more, and ‘Like’ Rachel on Facebook to keep up to date with her latest work.

1 Comment »

To celebrate Her Majesty’s 60th year on the throne, heraldic artist Neil Bromley has created an ornate family tree, detailing the royal line of succession since 1066.

Set down in elegant calligraphy and decorated with intricate heraldic artwork, we can see the Royal Line unfold through history, from William the Conqueror in 1066 to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. The work also includes the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

Where do you start on a project like this?
We recently spoke to Neil and he explained to us the different stages in producing this wonderful piece of work.

The Design
The actual text is fairly commonly known and through a number of resources I was able to follow the different houses that make up the Line of Succession and to place them in an order from which I could work from. It was important to make sure that as many Royal arms were incorporated as possible and so the only space left to work from was the outer edge, this determined my layout.

The original work was to be produced on finest manuscript vellum. Due to its size and the length of time it would take me to produce (seven months in total) I decided to stretch the vellum on a frame. Vellum does have a tendency to move with the different temperatures and moisture, so the stretching would keep the work flat. Once stretched, I then proceeded to design the basic layout.

All preliminary work is carried out on tracing paper and once I have a rough layout and draft, I am then able to redraw the entire work once again on trace to create a finished clean line example of what will be drawn up on to vellum. A process which takes time but is worth it as all good work comes from good design.

I tend to use a 4h pencil for most tracings and when it comes to drawing up on vellum I use a 9h for clarity. The trace is redrawn (every detail) on vellum using a slip of tracing paper backed with Armenian Bowl, a reddish pigment which has a tendency to brush off if not careful and so the entire work must be redrawn!

Gilding From here I like to create the colourful parts (it may be down to personal choice) and so gilding is the first and most important of orders. Gesso is laid where the Gold Leaf is to sit. I have already made this myself using the traditional method and this is laid in the evening usually all at once. The next morning (depending on weather) the Gold leaf is applied. A combination of thin and extra thick 23C gold leaf is applied. Once burnished, I am then able to work on all the painted gold. This is again a combination of shell gold as well as imitation Gold Gouache. For me it works well and is of course much cheaper!

Adding the colours Once this process has been completed I work on the colours. I lay the blues then the reds and from there build up each layer with a darker tone and another darker tone to create shading before outlining the work in a deep red/brown. All colours are Windsor and Newton Gouache. Any highlighting may be applied once completed.

Lettering Once the main border has been completed I may produce any hand lettering. Again a combination of Shell Gold, Gold powder mixed with Gum Arabic and water or just simple gouache will do nicely. This then leaves the main bulk of text to written. For this I always use William Mitchell nibs and mix Chinese stick ink for any Calligraphy. It gives a wonderful aroma when mixing and sits on vellum most beautifully, just resting on the surface. If any mistakes occur then let it dry and use a size 10 scalpel blade to very gently scrape off as vellum is non-porous and will take the blade. Paper is not so forgiving! Any coloured ink is usually gouache mixed with gum Arabic to ensure it stays on the page.

Visit the Royal Line of Succession website where you can purchase your own copy signed by the artist.

2 Comments »

Lin Kerr was born in South Africa and relocated to the United Kingdom in 1998. She has a degree in Fine Arts, a teaching diploma and began calligraphy in 1985.Lin Kerr’s main interests as a lettering artist lies in exploring the beauty of the letter through various media, with a particular interest in abstract work. She has worked with her own hand-made paper, gold, vellum and textiles. She produces hand-crafted books and mixed media pieces, and is equally at home in oil paints, acrylic and watercolours.Lin is a fully qualified, recognised teacher with teaching certificates from CLAS (Calligraphy & Lettering Society) City & Guilds, a Fine Arts Degree, and a College Art teaching diploma. She teaches and exhibits internationally.

No Comments »

Harriet Frazer founded Memorials by Artists three years after the death of her step-daughter, Sophie Behrens. Harriet realised that the successful creation of a unique memorial to Sophie had only been possible because she had been able to find a sympathetic artist, who understood what she and her family were trying to express and who was willing to work with them.The experience of searching for and eventually finding a beautiful memorial for Sophie took Harriet four years and led to the idea of helping others in a similar situation.

Memorials by Artists was founded on the belief that a memorial should be as individual as the person it is dedicated to. An individually designed memorial will reflect the character of that person in a way that choosing one from a catalogue cannot. Finding and collaborating with a sympathetic maker is central to achieving this.Every memorial commissioned through Memorials by Artists is hand carved by one of our designer/lettercutters, who create their own designs rather than working to a pattern. Each piece is considered as a creative opportunity, rather than a mere product and no two memorials are ever the same.

Memorials by Artists

No Comments »