Letters & Lettering: A Treatise with 200 Examples
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Letters & Lettering - Frank Chouteau Brown
Frank Chouteau Brown
Letters & Lettering: A Treatise with 200 Examples
Published by Good Press, 2019
goodpress@okpublishing.info
EAN 4057664655905
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
ROMAN CAPITALS
CHAPTER II
MODERN ROMAN LETTERS
CHAPTER III
GOTHIC LETTERS
CHAPTER IV
ITALIC AND SCRIPT
CHAPTER V
TO THE BEGINNER
INDEX
PEN DRAWING
Building Construction
SHADES & SHADOWS
I. ROMAN CAPITALS 1
II. MODERN ROMAN LETTERS 52
III. GOTHIC LETTERS 127
IV. ITALIC AND SCRIPT 182
V. TO THE BEGINNER 199
CHAPTER I
Table of Contents
ROMAN CAPITALS
Table of Contents
In speaking of the Roman
letter throughout this chapter its capital form—the form in monumental use among the Romans—will always be implied. The small or minuscule
letters, which present nomenclature includes under the general title of Roman
letters, and which will be considered in the following chapter, were of later formation than the capitals; and indeed only attained their definitive and modern form after the invention of printing from movable types.
The first point to be observed in regard to the general form of the Roman capital is its characteristic squareness. Although the letter as used to-day varies somewhat in proportions from its classic prototype, its skeleton is still based on the square.
Next to this typical squareness of outline, the observer should note that the Roman letter is composed of thick and thin lines. At first sight it may seem that no systematic rules determine which of these lines should be thick and which thin; but closer investigation will discover that the alternate widths of line were evolved quite methodically, and that they exactly fulfil the functions of making the letters both more legible and more decorative. Arbitrary rearrangements of these thick and thin lines, differing from the arrangement of them in the classic examples, have, indeed, been often attempted; but such rearrangements have never resulted in improvement, and, except in eccentric lettering, have fallen into complete disuse.
The original thickening and thinning of the lines of the classic Roman capitals was partly due to the imitation in stone inscriptions of the letter forms as they were written on parchment with the pen. The early Latin scribes held their stiff-nibbed reed pens almost directly upright and at right angles to the writing surface, so that a down stroke from left to right and slanted at an angle of about forty-five degrees would bring the nib across the surface broadwise, resulting in the widest line possible to the pen. On the other hand, a stroke drawn at right angles to this, the pen being still held upright, would be made with the thin edge of the nib, and would result in the narrowest possible line. From this method of handling the pen the variations of line width in the standard Roman forms arose; and we may therefore deduce three logical rules, based upon pen use, which will determine the proper distribution of the thick and thin lines:
I, Never accent horizontal lines. II, Always accent the sloping down strokes which run from left to right, including the so-called swash
lines, or flying tails, of Q and R; but never weight those which, contrariwise, slope up from left to right, with a single exception in the case of the letter Z, in which, if rule I be followed, the sloping line (in this case made with a down stroke) will be the only one possible to accent. III, Always accent the directly perpendicular lines, except in the N, where these lines seem originally to have been made with an up stroke of the pen; and the first line of the M, where the perpendiculars originally sloped in towards the top of the letter (see 2). On the round letters the accents should occur at the sides of the circle, as virtually provided in rule III, or on the upper right and lower left quarters (see 1-2), where in pen-drawn letters the accent of the down sloping stroke would naturally occur, as virtually determined in rule II.
The serif
—a cross-stroke or tick—finishes the free ends of all lines used in making a Roman capital. The value of the serif in stone-cut letters seems obvious. To define the end of a free line a sharp cut was made across it with the chisel, and as the chisel was usually wider than the thin line this cut extended beyond it. Serifs were added to the ends of the thick lines either for the sake of uniformity, or may have been suggested by the chisel-marked guide lines themselves. Indeed in late stone-cut Roman work the scratched guide lines along the top and bottom of each line of the inscription are distinctly marked and merge into the serifs, which extend farther than in earlier examples. The serif was adopted in pen letters probably from the same reasons that caused it to be added to the stone-cut letters, namely, that it definitely finished the free lines and enhanced the general squareness and finish of the letter's aspect.
3.
2. ALPHABET AFTER SERLIO. RECONSTRUCTED BY ALBERT R. ROSS2.
1. ALPHABET AFTER SERLIO. RECONSTRUCTED BY ALBERT R. ROSS1.
An excellent model for constructing the Roman capitals in a standard form will be found in the beautiful adaptation by Mr. A. R. Ross, 1 and 2, from an alphabet of capitals drawn by Sebastian Serlio, an Italian architect, engraver and painter of the sixteenth century, who devised some of the most refined variants of the classic Roman letter. Serlio's original forms, which are shown in 39 and 40, were intended for pen or printed use; but in altering Serlio's scheme of proportions it