The Calligraphy Pen

Lamy fountain pens have a strong reputation as sturdy, reliable pens that are comfortable to use. Lamy is one of the leading fountain pen manufacturers in Germany and the fountain pens are sought after the world over.

You can buy Lamy Fountain and Calligraphy Pens by visiting The Calligraphy Pen Store. 

The following is a selection of some of the most popular Lamy fountain pens on the market today. 

Lamy CP1 PTFountain Pen

This is the top of the line in the Lamy range and is a very sleek, cylindrical bodied pen made of solid stainless steel.

Lamy Accent Brilliant Finish Fountain Pen

This is a simply designed pen that is both durable and stylish. It includes a solid steel spring-mounted clip and the grip sections towards the end of the pen are interchangeable.

Lamy 2000 Fountain Pen

The Lamy 2000 Fountain Pen has a classic design that has been in favor for decades. The pen is made of fiberglass reinforced Makloron with stainless steel accents. It’s a pen that is lightweight and easy to use. To refill this pen you must use an ink bottle rather than a changeable ink cartridge.

Lamy Joy Calligraphy Pen

The Lamy Joy is the company’s classic calligraphy pen. The holder is a smooth chiselled looking pen with a wire clip. The Lamy Joy Calligraphy Pen comes in three nib widths of 1.1, 1.5 or 1.9mm. This is an upscale lightweight shaped stem pen. The clip is flexible and made of spring brass wire and comes with a stainless steel nib of a varying chisel point.

Lamy Logo Fountain Pen

The Lamy Logo Fountain Pen is made of stainless steel with a cyclical matt finish and spring-mounted steel clip.

Lamy Safari Fountain Pen

The Lamy Safari pens are strikingly handsome looking pens that are incredibly durable. The Lamy Safari Italic fountain pen is contoured for a more comfortable grip and you can find them in a shiny black finish with a stainless steel nib which comes to a medium italic point. The Lamy Safari Fountain pens come in a range of colors such as black, white, charcoal, lime green, yellow, royal blue, bright red and blue and red. The available nib sizes are extra fine, fine, medium and broad.

Lamy Vista Fountain Pen

The Lamy Vista Fountain Pens come with a transparent casing that shows off the inner workings of the pen. The pen comes with the same Lamy pen clip that adorns the Lamy Safari. This pen comes with interchangeable ink cartridges.

Lamy AL Star Fountain Pen

The Lamy AL Star Faountain Pen takes its shape from the Safari range and is made from a lightweight durable aluminum with a comfortable grip. The pen comes with nibs in extra fine, fine, medium and broad.

These fountain pens are more on the Lamy page of The Calligraphy Pen Store.

This continues the presentation of scripts in which you can practice with your calligraphy pen. To date we have taken a look at Foundational Hand, Uncial Hand and Roman Capitals. This article is a presentation of one of the many Gothic Hands. Gothic script includes many variations such as Gothic Textura Quadrata, Gothic Quadrata Prescius, Pointed Quadrata Miniscule, and Modern Gothic Miniscule. Among the gothic majuscules are Modern Gothic Capitals, Gothic Capitals 1, Gothic Capitals 2 and Gothic Versal Capitals…the list goes on.

Gothic Hand

The defining characteristic of Gothic Hand is the extreme density that has also earned it the name ‘Black Letter”.

Scripts such as Gothic Textura Quadrata were named after the shape of the letters on the page. This script then refers to the square shape of the letters and the idea that the written page should look as though it has a woven texture.

When writing Gothic Hand try to remember that it is a dominant hand with letters to be grouped closely together. While constructing your letters try to keep the calligraphy pen at an angle of around 30 degrees. When drawing the hairlines, do so with the pen at a 90 degree or, for the letters ‘s’ and ‘x’, with the left hand point of the pen nib.

Medieval scribes had no official majuscule letters for their Gothic scripts so they tended to borrow from the Roman Capitals and Uncial Hand. Gothic majuscules should be used sparingly because, written in a block, the letters virtually become illegible.

Lettering Charts 

Gothic Majuscule

Gothic Miniscule

Your new calligraphy pen (or maybe even your old calligraphy pen) shouldn’t sit idly with nothing to do. So far we have explored two popular scripts, the Foundational Hand and the Uncial Hand. We will now add another alphabet to learn and practice.

Roman Capitals are a majuscule script. In other words the letters are only formed as capital letters.

A Roman Capitals alphabet sampler is supplied at the bottom of the page but first, here’s a brief history of the origins of Roman Capitals and some rules and tips to remember when forming the letters.

Origins of Roman Capitals

Going back over two thousand years to Ancient Rome and the letters inscribed in stone and marble by the master craftsmen of the time gives us the origins of this classic alphabet. Roman Capitals are probably the most important examples of letters that would come to greatly influence Western calligraphy.

The Roman Capital letterforms are based around the circle and the square and can be divided into four groups: circle within the square, three quarter width, half width and whole square.

Today’s Roman Capitals are not quite as opulent as the letters of ancient times with smaller, more elegant serifs now a feature.

Using Your Calligraphy Pen

When you form your Roman Capitals you need to ensure that your calligraphy pen maintains an angle of 30 degrees. When forming the diagonal strokes you alter the angle to 45 degrees and for elegance in the serifs go for an angle that is even flatter than 30 degrees.

The letters should be formed with some space around them so make sure you are conscious of not crowding them too closely together.

Roman Capitals rely on the geometric widths relative to the circle and square for their elegance. The widths are based on which groups the letters are formed. It is important to have a good understanding of how the letters are constructed before attempting to construct the whole alphabet.

The calligraphy pen nib you would be looking at using would be an edged or broad pen to write this script.

This is another entry in an ongoing series that presents some of the most common types of calligraphy alphabets. These alphabets are among the more popular, common and are used as a good starting point for beginner calligraphers. Other alphabets covered in this series include: Foundational hand, Roman Capitals, Gothic hand, Italic hand, Copperplate hand, Rustic hand, Carolingian hand, Batarde hand and Neuland hand.

Origins of Uncial Hand 

Uncial hand was developed around the 4th century AD or even earlier. It is composed of majuscules which have no corresponding miniscules to accompany them. The few letters that extend above the body of the letter - ‘D’, ‘H’ and ‘Q’ - are the first signs of ascenders and descenders that were to later come in miniscule script.

Uncial Form 

Uncial letters are very rounded and may not come naturally to anyone who normally writes compressed forms. All arches follow the round arches of the ‘O’. Ensure that you have your calligraphy pen at a flat angle to ensure that the marks are sufficiently thick and wide.

Letters that have slight ascenders or descenders should only be minimal in height, extending only between one or two nib widths. The letters are upright letters and should not be written with any slope. If you find that the letters begin to have a forward lean to them, you’re probably writing too quickly and need to slow down.

When composing this script you must be thinking ‘fat and flat’. When people run into problems with Uncials it is usually because the roundness of the characters is not being maintained. Uncial script is quite suitable for left-handers who should find writing uncial script very comfortable.

Origins of the Foundational Hand 

The Foundational hand was devised by Edward Johnston who lived from 1872 – 1944. He devised the script after his studies of medieval manuscripts in the British Library after he was commissioned to write a manuscript by the Principal of the Central School of Art, William Lethaby. Foundational hand is also known as Round Hand.

The hand is based on a 10th-century English Carolingian manuscript and is the hand that is one of the first that a calligrapher will learn. It is the first of the modern scripts

Writing Foundational Script

The Foundational hand is based on the circle made by two overlapping strokes of the calligraphy pen. This cursive hand is written with a constant pen angle and few pen lifts. The characteristic thick and thin strokes of the letterforms are the result of the constant angle at which the calligraphy pen is held.

Almost all the letters of this hand relate to the circle and arches, so when you prepare to write the letters, practise by drawing controlled crescent moon shapes, beginning and ending on a thin point. Once you have mastered the circular shapes, the semicircles can be attached to upright stems to create rounded letterforms or they can be extended into a downstroke to form arches. Rounded serifs are used on entry and exit of strokes.

Foundational hand is a formal, upright script where each letter is made up of two or more strokes making it a script that has more lifts than a cursive script. The pen is held at an angle of 30 degrees which will control the distribution of the weight, creating the thin and thick strokes. This constant pen angle is necessary so that good, rounded letterforms and strong arches are produced. The only exception to the 30 degree rule is when forming letters in the diagonals group when the pen is to be held at an angle of 45 degrees to prevent the stroke from being too thick.

The letters should be evenly spaced, the letter height is four times the width of the pen nib - you can check this by turning your calligraphy pen sideways to make squares with the nib and then rule the lines based on this measurement.

The Foundational Alphabet Letterforms