Chinese Calligraphy

Easier - Calligraphy is the art of making beautiful or elegant handwriting. It is a fine art of skilled penmanship.

Harder - The word calligraphy literally means beautiful writing. Before the invention of the printing press some 500 years ago, it was the way books were made. Each copy was handwritten out by a scribe working in a scriptorium. The hand writing was done with quill and ink onto materials like vellum or parchment. The lettering style applied was one of the period bookhands like rustic, carolingian, blackletter, etc.

Today, there are three main types or styles of calligraphy: (1) Western or Roman, (2) Arabic, and (3) Chinese or Oriental. This project focuses mainly on Western calligraphy with a glimpse at the other two styles.