{ feuilleton }

This month is a major one in book publishing as Carl Jung’s magnum opus The Red Book, or Liber Novus, which has remained unpublished for 80 years, is issued in a facsimile edition. Selections of pages have been turning up in reviews and online previews which easily whet the appetite.
In his late 30s, Jung started [...]

Or Gramato-graphices. In quo varia scripturae emblemata, belgicis, germanicis, italicis, hispanicis, gallicis characteribus exaata… scripta, aeri incisa, et impressa per Cornelium Boissenium Enchusanum to give the full title. A treatise on penmanship and calligraphy from 1605 by Cornelis Dirckszoon Boissens. Also another free PDF at Archive.org. Searching for better reproductions turned up this stunning engraving [...]

Or Fables and other short poems : collected from the most celebrated English authors : the whole curiously engrav’d for the practice & amusement of young gentlemen & ladies in the art of writing to give its full title, a children’s primer from 1731 and another free title available at Archive.org. John Bickham was one [...]

Two of many stunning calligraphy samples from Studies in Pen Art (1914) by William E Dennis, a free PDF at Luc Devroye’s extensive font site.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Flourishes

The Tugra, or imperial monogram, of Suleiman the Magnificent, c. 1550–65. From the calligraphy section of the Islamic art collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ottoman calligraphy and Arabic typography
• Flourishes
• Ghubar
• Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern [...]

Above: Ottoman calligraphy from a selection at the Library of Congress. Below: contemporary Arabic typography from the Experimental Typography Flickr pool.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ghubar
• Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East

There’s calligraphy and then there’s fraktur extravaganzas such as this….
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Post one thousand
• Ghubar
• Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East

Ghubar calligraphy by Hassan Massoudy.
Ghubar (or “dust” in Arabic) is the name of a special kind of calligraphic script. As its name implies, ghubar can be as delicate as particles of dust on a piece of paper. Words written in this script can be as fine as a single hair.
Originally designed for messages being sent [...]

Shamseh, Unknown artist, Indian Moraqqa?.
First half of 17th century, Golestan Palace.
Sixteen pages of paintings at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
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• Prince Iskandar’s horoscope
• Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East

The horoscope of Prince Iskandar, grandson of Tamerlane, the Turkman Mongol conqueror, by Imad al-Din Mahmud al-Kashi, showing the positions of the heavens at the moment of Iskandar’s birth on 25th April 1384.
From the Wellcome Trust image collection. Considering the Wellcome Trust’s medical background, there’s a surprising amount of non-scientific material in its image library, [...]

Beautiful work. Via growabrain.
Update: “A study of medieval Islamic art has shown some of its geometric patterns use principles established centuries later by modern mathematicians.” Full story here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy
• Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East

Seeing as we’re living through a period of recurrent paranoia and hysteria, with a whole state of matter being declared dangerous, with people falling under suspicion for not being white, and with events like this a daily occurrence, one can only wonder how we endured thirty years of deadly IRA terrorism in this country without [...]

Love by Hassan Massoudy.
Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East
The British Museum
18 May–3 September 2006
Room 35
Admission free
Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East is an exhibition based largely on the collections of the British Museum complemented by a number of loans. It demonstrates the imaginative ways in which artists across the [...]