The answer may be India. India certainly has a large inventory of spoken languages, over 2000 (see note at bottom) at a conservative estimate, and a great many of them are languages with a written heritage. … Read More
In 1988, Yi Nianhua, a woman in her 80s, spent many evenings scribbling elegant characters at a table in her kitchen in a small rice-farming village in Shangjiangxu, China. With only a blunt writing brush, the elongated script … Read More
Bracket Peacock logo in two scripts. The word “barakat” is in Roman/Latin script below in a style designed to fit with the flow of the Arabic script which makes up the body of the bird. Barakat, with the same B-R-K root as other Semitic languages — برکت — in Persian, Arabic and Urdu has the meaning of blessing, happiness, bliss, good fortune and prosperity. Design by S. J. Thomas. www.palmstone.comRead More
When it comes to writing the digits 1, 2, 3, etc. there is no true cursive script, meaning there is no method for connecting the digits one to another. The reason for this is straightforward enough: the clarity of … Read More
Beloved of poets, mystics and lovers, ‘eshq is the Farsi word for passionate love, whether of the devotee for the Divine or the shared embrace of lovers in the garden. Here the calligraphed Persian word is repeated in a rondel … Read More
An amazing number of images and symbols are packed into this custom-designed hand cut ketubah. Papercut ketubah are very popular, but with the advent laser-cutting, it is increasingly rare to find one that is hand cut. I designed this ketubah … Read More
A blending of watercolor imagery and a formal border design characterize this marriage certificate. A panoramic view of the mountains stretches across the curving top of the certificate, with the archway mirrored in less formal fashion by springtime trees … Read More
I am pleased to say that I had my Armenian calligraphy piece “Lord Have Mercy” accepted to the “Calligraphies in Conversation” exhibition at Ziya Art Center in Berkeley, California.
Manchu, the language of the ruling emperor of China’s Qing dynasty, is nearly extinct. While efforts are under way to revive the language, it is a far cry from the time that official documents were written in the Manchu script … Read More
We live in the digital age, right? Or at least the keyboard age — isn’t that obvious? Computers, cell phones and tablets are ubiquitous. Why would anyone need to write anything by hand?
Look at it another way: why … Read More
