- Messages
- 1,860
- Location
- St Leonards, Dorset
If your penmanship sucks the rest is irrelevant. How many of us can reproduce the exquisite handwriting of 150 years ago?
If your penmanship sucks the rest is irrelevant. How many of us can reproduce the exquisite handwriting of 150 years ago?
That's very interesting, and similar to my own feelings and experience.I never had formal training in pen & ink script, but I had a journalism professor in college (1968) who got me hooked on italics. It was very English to my 19-year-old-mind. If I thought I had a chance in hell to perfect it at 66, and (more importantly) had something to write longhand, I'd take it up again.
How very true. Electricity and technology have been a great benefit, but have also changed many things in ways not for the better. In the UK we are often warned of an apocalyptic time coming when power will be short or non-existent, and I wonder how people will get on without it, in the absence of many manual skills.I loved the quality of the writing that a dip pen produced. I, too, did the long ess for a while, but in Texas it's not something you do very often, or with glowing admiration from your peers. My mother used to tell me how she had penmanship classes in school as a child (also b. 1924), and it's something my American generation (and every generation) could employ to their benefit. Unfortunately, the keyboard and texts have ruined any hope for legible handwriting, much less a form that aspires to calligraphy.
My favourites at the moment are the Italix Churchmans Prescriptor and Parsons Essential pens, in medium and broad italic nibs. In the £40-£50 range, they're not "starter" pens, but I'd recommend them as the next step up.
Might I ask for your opinion of the Parson's Essential? I've had my eye on one for a while, but have yet to order one.
Spent an hour online looking at 50 shades of blue, my favourite is Diamine Prussian Blue or Sailor Nano Blue Black or...