Painting with words

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 18

Painting with words

Follow a goose around is the unusual advice that Colleen O’Connor often' gives her calligraphy students. The reason? To find feathers from the bird to make traditional calligraphy quills. Mrs O’Connor says there is no need to kill the bird for the particular wing feathers to make the pens. They fall out naturally and calligraphers can use them provided they see where they fall. Mrs O’Connor, who has been practising calligraphy for several years, recently attended a six day course in the art in Armidale in Australia with Donald Jackson, one of two Royal Scribes in the Royal Crown office in London. She was one of three New Zealanders among the 30 calligraphers attending the advanced course. The others were John Wilkin, of Wellington and Donald Wood, of Auckland. Mrs O’Connor and Mr Wood received Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants to attend the course. The course was organised by the Crafts Council of Australia and the University of New England. Donald Jackson has given many such courses in different countries to promote and explain calligraphy. Calligraphy is Greek for beautiful writing and is the art of “painting with words”.

The art today is done with the same techniques used by the ancients and that is part of the attraction for Mrs O’Connor, who 'teaches at her Huntsbury home. The art has undergone something of a revolution in the last decade, mainly through the teachings of Donald Jackson, who has written a book on the subject called “The Story of Writing”. Mr Jackson taught the traditional techniques at Armidale, from cutting quills to gold laying to scripts. “He uses quills for his work. I use both quills and pens. We spent a lot of time analysing scripts, and cutting quills to reproduce those scripts. “We also had to sharpen a knife — a pen knife — to cut the quills,” the Christchurch calligrapher said. Among the other pens Mr Jackson brought to the course were hollow reed pens with the usual metal reservoirs to hold the ink inserted. The most often used quills were turkey or goose feathers, but calligraphers also used bamboo and reeds, Mrs O’Connor said. The feathers were cut completely off the quill as they tended to float the quill in the calligrapher’s hand making it difficult to control, she said. The quill was cut at dif-

ferent angles for different scripts. Italic scripts were done with a 45 degree nib, other scripts at a 30 degree angle. Among the commercially produced pens were music pens which drew a mark of four or five lines and pens with a flat nib which drew a wide mark. Donald Jackson preferred quills because he felt “they !iick up a writer’s vibraions, giving much more potential for expression than any other writing instrument,” Mrs O’Connor said. Inks, also, can make a difference to writing/ Many of the commercially produced inks flow more freely for use with the pens. Chinese stick ink is something Mrs O’Connor intends to work with; The ink comes in the form of a stick which is a compound of glue, soot and a little water. The dry stick is rubbed into water to produce the ink. “That was one of the advantages of the course. We went over things that I knew but using slightly different methods and new ideas,” Mrs O’Connor said. The course also discussed using gold or gifting and recipes for jesso, which is the substance placed on the area to be gilded to slightly raise the surface. The compound is made of plaster, sugar, glue, and

white lead. The gilt is laid on over the substance. Gold comes in three forms: flat gold which is mixed with a little water, gold leaf with a backing and gold in ingots. Once laid the gold is burnished using a special tool to rub it. Colleen O’Connor now uses crescentshaped agate-tipped tools. Before these were available she used a dog’s tooth, which was exactly the right shape. She acquired a smaller burnishing tool when a friend’s pup lost its milk teeth and her husband bound the teeth into a reed.

Mrs O’Connor prefers to work her calligraphy on paper and is also interested in paper making. One of her recent works features traditional letter shapes with pieces of coloured paper stuck on the work. She is interested in pursuing this sort of work. “I use the traditional techniques but with modern forms.” She still does traditional calligraphy also. If a plan to curate a travelling exhibition, of work by the calligraphers on the course is realised, Mrs O’Connor plans to display examples of both traditional and modern work.