posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jaeleslie at 03:23pm on 04/08/2004
jaeleslie at 03:23pm on 04/08/2004Besides the supply store and the bookstore that run all week, and the special paper and supply dealers that come in for a trade show for the first three days, the calligraphy conference always sends you home with lots of free doodads. This year was particularly rich in doodads. Besides the nice canvas freebie bag I have a new broadedge Schaeffer fountain pen and a pot of bright red Speedball acrylic ink to try out. And someone has invented a sharpener for those rectangular carpenter's pencils, who woulda thunk?
But the real bonanza was on Tuesday, when we had an afternoon off for touring and/or rest. In the central student commons, curiously named the Goshen Lounge, several committees had arranged an event called the World's Fair of Calligraphy, in recognition of the centennial of St Louis' Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition of 1904. There was an ice cream stand (waffle cones were invented at the St Louis fair), a labyrinth walk, and various demonstrations of Arabic calligraphy, Japanese papermaking, and so forth.
Besides all this, the Utah and Idaho calligraphy societies had organized an astonishing combination workshop they called Around the World in Eighty Minutes, although it turned out to be more like Around the World in Two and Half Hours. First you got a polaroid passport photo taken, which was attached inside a little passport booklet that included information on each station and was stamped at each location, handed a bag of mysterious goodies, and then guided in groups of ten through eight different workshop stations that each presented samples of the historical scripts of different countries. Some of the projects that we then attempted to complete in ten minutes involved far too much threading of needles and beading for ladies of a certain age who had forgotten their glasses. But a surprising number of them turned out very well. The organizers and presenters (who ended up lecturing several hundred people over the course of the afternoon and evening) we thanked as warmly as possible at every turn.
At the Egyptian exhibit, we copied sample heiroglyphs with reed pens onto bits of papyrus. At the Norway table, we tried out wood-burning (entirely new to me) of runes onto little lapel pins with a particularly well-thought-out glued backing. For China, we designed and cut name stamps, surprisingly fast, to stamp a prepared scroll. The Indian project was perhaps overly ambitious, an embossed copper bookmark, and like several other stations there we learned very little about the Sanskrit script. At the Roman table, we were given bits of vellum that had been silkscreened (with a Gocco printer) with a decorative capital letter for another bookmark that we then filled with color illumination, brushes and pans of paint all set out ready for us. But the generous preparations that had gone into the event were simply astonishing. We generally failed to execute proper cuneiform letters at the Sumerian table, but playing with the red clay tablets and the wrapping provided for subsequent transport was fun. And although I learned nothing useful about Hebrew at the Israel table, and the gear didn't historically have much to do with it, I was utterly amazed to receive there a real wax tablet, for making notes, very much like the one I had seen in the British Museum. Only new.
But the real bonanza was on Tuesday, when we had an afternoon off for touring and/or rest. In the central student commons, curiously named the Goshen Lounge, several committees had arranged an event called the World's Fair of Calligraphy, in recognition of the centennial of St Louis' Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition of 1904. There was an ice cream stand (waffle cones were invented at the St Louis fair), a labyrinth walk, and various demonstrations of Arabic calligraphy, Japanese papermaking, and so forth.
Besides all this, the Utah and Idaho calligraphy societies had organized an astonishing combination workshop they called Around the World in Eighty Minutes, although it turned out to be more like Around the World in Two and Half Hours. First you got a polaroid passport photo taken, which was attached inside a little passport booklet that included information on each station and was stamped at each location, handed a bag of mysterious goodies, and then guided in groups of ten through eight different workshop stations that each presented samples of the historical scripts of different countries. Some of the projects that we then attempted to complete in ten minutes involved far too much threading of needles and beading for ladies of a certain age who had forgotten their glasses. But a surprising number of them turned out very well. The organizers and presenters (who ended up lecturing several hundred people over the course of the afternoon and evening) we thanked as warmly as possible at every turn.
At the Egyptian exhibit, we copied sample heiroglyphs with reed pens onto bits of papyrus. At the Norway table, we tried out wood-burning (entirely new to me) of runes onto little lapel pins with a particularly well-thought-out glued backing. For China, we designed and cut name stamps, surprisingly fast, to stamp a prepared scroll. The Indian project was perhaps overly ambitious, an embossed copper bookmark, and like several other stations there we learned very little about the Sanskrit script. At the Roman table, we were given bits of vellum that had been silkscreened (with a Gocco printer) with a decorative capital letter for another bookmark that we then filled with color illumination, brushes and pans of paint all set out ready for us. But the generous preparations that had gone into the event were simply astonishing. We generally failed to execute proper cuneiform letters at the Sumerian table, but playing with the red clay tablets and the wrapping provided for subsequent transport was fun. And although I learned nothing useful about Hebrew at the Israel table, and the gear didn't historically have much to do with it, I was utterly amazed to receive there a real wax tablet, for making notes, very much like the one I had seen in the British Museum. Only new.