Saturday, November 29, 2008

Copperplate Writing




Have you come across old documents and noticed the flowery and beautiful handwriting on them, with swirls and ornate capitals?

There is a style of writing I like a lot, it's called Spencerian Copperplate. It uses a very distinctive ink pen, with the nib held at a special angle. It's usually found on historical or formal documents, like court writings or land deeds. Very fancy!

The writing was usually transferred to copper plates for printing purposes, that's why it's called copperplate writing.

I made these little glass and coppertoned ornaments to look like bronze with very decorative and ornate script writing on them. The smaller one has a little pixie face in the middle of a poppy flower. It's a vintage image from an old greeting card from Victorian times.


They could be jewelry focal beads, or holiday ornaments. They would look nice on a gift wrap, as a sort of extra gift. I will be making more of these soon. I like the very antiquated look of them.

They're small and dainty despite their metallic and ancient look.

If you're curious about Spencerian Copperplate script calligraphy, there's a website about it with a lot of information.


3 comments:

Cindy Gimbrone said...

Thanks for the info on Spencerian writing - remember those old handwriting exercises from grammar school? (Am I dating myself?) My mother had books on handwriting with the swirly capital letters. The copper plates with the writing look sooooooo cool! Always love your posts, they're so informative!

LLYYNN - Lynn Davis said...

Hi, Cindy, glad you like the posts, sometimes I think I roam around on topics a bit - I have some old family documents that I rescued many, many years ago from my great-grandfather's trunk and saved. They have this lovely, spidery type of script on them. When I look at how I write these days it comes back to me how little practice I do to have a nice handwriting. Thanks for mentioning the handwriting exercises, I had forgotten about them.

Everything in the little charm is glass, the only metal is the casing - intrigued?

Cindy Gimbrone said...

How AWESOME is that!? The whole charm is glass? I love it when glass looks like something else! Fabulous! I LOVE it!