A history of alphabets from around the world
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A history of alphabets from around the world | |
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The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Chapter 4: The Development of the Roman Capital, page 4 Moreover, the process of modification from pictures to letter symbols covered a long period; nor did the forms, at once, assume fixed shapes, but varied with the conceptions of every different maker of them, the nature of the tool he employed, and the material on which he fashioned them. The forms themselves became trite and ordinary, and, as handed on and on, gradually grew away from their pictorial forebears until finally they no longer bore any resemblance to, or even suggestion of, the forms that inspired them, their pictorial significance by then being lost and too deeply buried in oblivion to make resurrection easy. After all, it is not really necessary to press the theory beyond the earliest Phoenician alphabet [1000 B.C.], since Phoenician letters seem to have been the actual final literal development of the constantly changing ideographic symbols through the hieratic and demotic writings; and it is on the widths of those forms that the writer chiefly bases his suggestion, in the absence, as far as he is aware, of any specific statement elsewhere regarding the matter.
The curves in the Trajan capitals are not simple geometrical lines, but are carefully considered quantities which impart a character to the forms that no mechanical construction can possibly give. Drawn freely, ulltrammeled by bow pen, straightedge, or mechanical rule in the pursuit of distinction and style, each new line leads on to new difficulties to be overcome, to new subtleties of form, & to constant varieties by each change of taste or fancy. So far as we of today are concerned, the Trajan alphabet, in its spontaneity, is primal. The capitals shown on this page were carefully drawn from photographs of the Trajan Column at Rome. The great merit of Roman capitals is simplicity; every useless & meaningless line has been eliminated. The letters vary in shape and proportion, & to bring out their full beauty requires a nice discrimination in the spacing and combining of their irregular forms. For years after the fall of Rome, Latin lettering was retrograde, but with the advent of the Renaissance, pure classic forms of the ancients were revived; and the Italiall Renaissance, it may be said, was the "golden age" of lettering. The Renaissance artists seem indeed to have grasped the spirit of classicism, and their productions acquired a sense of refinement and grace that was not always present in the earlier work. In Persia, a sentence written by a master of calligraphy is treasured as we might treasure a drawing by Holbein; the severe purity of the lapidary letters of the Renaissance produces a thrill of pleasure in the same way that the subtle proportions of a classic column move men to a desire for emulation. These artists of the Renaissance, however, added little to the essential forms already established by the early craftsmen, so that their work needs no further mention here. Continue to page 5 |
The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Introduction What Letters Are Letters in General The Development of the Roman Capital Letters Before Printing The National Hands The Development of Gothic The Beginnings of Types The Qualities of Lettering Some Practical Considerations Notes on the Plates |
