George L. Thomson

This practical guide is wonderful. After explaining the basics, like writing material, surfaces and instruments, different techniques from past to present are explained, which is followed by a large selection of projects to revise the techniques described.

Throughout the book you will find a lot of pictures that guide you through the individual strokes that are necessary to create a certain letter or swirl. Different calligraphy alphabets are also displayed, each with individual strokes indicated.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who'd like to go beyond writing with fountain pen. You might not want to create your best friend's wedding invitation, but a nice book plate or your monogram on a large piece of thick paper might be nice.… (meer)

A book that I have not found useful. This may be because I am somewhere between beginner and intermediate skill. I am rather dissatisfied with the letterforms as presented in this volume. They are neither terribly accurate nor terribly elegant. The primary use for this book is in presenting the letterforms in very large format with ruling already provided. This makes it easy to photocopy and scale to the tools you are working with, thereby bypassing the need to rule up. I can see this being useful for beginners. The conglomerate nature of the letterforms too, I can see as being useful for beginners. But the text that accompanies them does not really situate the the forms and practice of calligraphy in the periods it develops out of.

There are many books which are better in both text and in the letterforms provided. Avoid unless you are looking for something primarily to produce pre-ruled practice sheets and are looking for the most generalized hands.… (meer)