In the West, calligraphy eventually evolved from the earliest cave paintings, such as those (35,000-20,000 BC) at Lascaux, France, into the abstractions that became the familiar letterforms of the alphabet.
About 3500 BC the ancient Egyptians created a form of picture writing called hieroglyphs—sacred inscriptions—usually incised on monuments or inside tombs. Hieroglyphs were also written on papyrus, an early form of paper made from a rushlike plant growing along the Nile; the earliest examples date from the 5th Dynasty (2465-2323 BC). The scribes used either a brush or a flat-edged pen cut from a river reed to write on papyrus scrolls.
The Phoenicians, traders and seafarers of the eastern Mediterranean, were the first to invent, sometime before 1000 BC, a system with 24 letters, written from right to left. The word alphabet is derived from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph and bet.
About 850 BC the Greeks took over alphabetic writing from the Phoenicians. The first line was written from right to left, followed by a line written from left to right, as a farmer would plough a field. This method is called boustrophedon. Finally they settled on left to right, as Westerners still write today. Greek letters were carved into stone, cast in metal, painted on pottery, and written on papyrus.
The Romans, before the end of the 2nd century BC, had adapted the Greek alphabet to the Latin language, changing the shapes to the capital letters used today. The proportions of Roman letters on monumental inscriptions, such as those on
Trajan's Column (106-113) in Rome, have never been surpassed. They were painted on stone with a brush and then carved with chisel and mallet.
In Renaissance books calligraphy was printed from woodblocks, but in the 17th century wood was replaced by copperplates.
These engravings resulted in much finer lines and increasingly elaborate writing books. One of the finest calligraphic artists was Jan van de Velde of Holland. Maria Strick of Rotterdam and Ester Inglis of Scotland were 17th-century professional calligraphers. In England, Edward Cocker, Charles Snell, and John Clark and other calligraphers in France and Spain spread the new copperplate styles.
In the 18th century, The Universal Penman (1733-1741), by the English calligrapher George Bickham, appealed to businessmen, administrators, and schoolmasters. Calligraphic scripts continued to serve as models for type designs. For the businessman and student it was not easy to attain the perfection of the engraved scripts with the use of quill pens. To speed up writing, the pen was held at a far steeper angle, hairlines were thin, and curves and downstrokes swelled with pressure from the hand. As commerce took over, penmanship declined.
Two inventions of the 19th century—the steel pen (imitating the shape of the quill) and the fountain pen—became part of daily life, but handwriting, overembellished, often vulgar, could hardly be considered calligraphy any longer.
In the 20th century the typewriter did not replace handwriting altogether. In England Alfred Fairbank revived italic with his teaching sets of the 1920s. Tom Gourdie brought italic to schools in Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany. Rudolf von Larisch in Austria and Rudolf Koch in Germany taught calligraphy and design. Those who promoted calligraphy and handwriting in the United States include William Dwiggins, Oscar Ogg, Ray DaBoll, Paul Standard, Arnold Bank, and George Salter. More than 30 calligraphic societies currently flourish in the United States and Europe.
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