The Love of Arabic, Ottoman and Persian Calligraphy

Presentation: 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m. (open to public)
Workshop: 12:30-3:30 p.m. (registration required)
Workshop Cost: $30
Materials fee: $12

The presentation will include a history of Arabic, Ottoman and Persian calligraphy and will take a glance on the roots and various styles emerged out of it. Various applications of different calligraphic styles, such as architectural designs and monuments, religious context (Quran and Hadith), literature and royal calligraphy will be discussed in detail. The presentation will also cover materials and tools used in Persian and Arabic calligraphy. The workshop that follows will include a short introduction to Persian Calligraphy with some basic lessons, using authentic Persian- Arabic calligraphy materials.

To learn more, visit http://www.persiantypography.com/.

I’m pleased to announce that Elinor Aishah Holland and I are collaborating on a series of stock video clips featuring Arabic calligraphy. Our first collection—Arabic Calligraphy Letterforms—features Ms. Holland writing each of the eighteen basic shapes in the Arabic alphabet.

The video clips are available for purchase through www.istockphoto.com. We plan to create other clips and collections in the future, so leave a comment below if you have a specific Arabic word you’d like to see written in calligraphy (and captured on video.)

The French artist Julien Breton, also known as Kalaam, spent a week in October in New York City, capturing some amazing works of “light calligraphy.” His work is inspired by Arabic calligraphy, but uses a latin-based script of his own devising.

See more images of his work on the designboom blog, or check out Julien’s website.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened a newly reinstalled exhibit this week for their Islamic art collection, called the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.

The exhibit is a treasure trove for calligraphy. From the New York Times’ art review:

The written word is omnipresent. Whether in the form of love poems, proverbs or passages from Islam’s holy book, the Koran, calligraphy spreads like a fine net over everything, creating an art that almost literally speaks.

Learn more on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.

The novel The Calligrapher’s Secret by Rafik Schami is a passionate love story involving an acclaimed calligrapher, his beautiful wife, and a lively young apprentice. The book is set in Damascus, Syria in the early to mid-1950s.

The plot has more to do with political and religious intrigue and the factions that existed (and exist) in Syria in the 1950′s than with calligraphy, but there are a few gems interspersed in its pages regarding the culture and art of Islamic calligraphy. Here are a few of the best snippets:

On the calligrapher’s pen (Note: I’m not sure how historically accurate this information is, but it’s still interesting!):

The calligraphers made the simple act of letter-writing into a cult of secrets. They wrote letters to husbands or wives with a copper pen, letters to friends and lovers with a silver pen, letters to particularly important persons with a golden pen, letters to a promised bride with the beak of a stork, and to enemies and adversaries with a pen carved from a pomegranate twig.

The following is a lovely passage about the art of calligraphy, reminiscent of Mohamed Zakariya’s Music for the Eyes:

Arabic script could have been made to be music for the eye. As it is always cursive, the length of the link between the characters plays a large part in the composition. The lengthening or shortening of this link is to the eye like the extension or reduction of the time for which a musical note is held to the ear. The letter A(lif), which is a vertical line in Arabic, becomes a bar line for the rhythm of the music. But as the size of the letter A(lif) itself determines the size of all other letters, according to the doctrine of proportion, it also takes part in the height and depth of the music formed horizontally by the letters on every line. And the different breadth of both the letters and the transitions at the foot, body, and head of those letters, from fine as a hair to sweeping, also influences the eye. Extension in the horizontal and the interplay between round and angular characters, between vertical and horizontal lines work on the melody of the script and produce a mood that is either light, playful, and merry, or calmly melancholic, or even heavy and dark.

And if you want to go carefully about making music with the letters, the empty space between letters and words calls for even greater skill. The blank spaces in a work of calligraphy are moments of rest. And as in Arabic music, calligraphy too depends on the repetition of certain elements that encourage not only the dance of body and soul but also our ability to move away from the earthly domain and rise to other spheres.

On Hafiz Osman (Again, I’m not sure if this is historically correct, but it’s quite interesting):

When Hafiz Osmani died in the year 1110 his pupils granted him his last wish. All his life he had collected and kept the shavings of wood that fell from his bamboo and reed pens as he cut them, ground them down and pointed them. There were ten large jute sacks full of them. His pupils were to boil up the shavings and use the water for the final washing of his body.

On that somber note, I think I’ll wind up this review of The Calligrapher’s Secret. Pick up a copy for yourself to see what happens when the calligrapher Hamid Farsi attempts to modernize the Arabic script, and discover what causes his lovely wife to vanish one night.

Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares: What is your advice for the younger generation of type designers from the region?
Pascal Zoghbi: I still consider myself part of the young generation of Arabic type designers, but I guess your question is what would be my advice for the beginner type designers. I would say first and foremost: learn, practice and understand Arabic calligraphy.

Read the full interview on the Khatt Foundation website.

Different stages of the Hamsa font design process. From http://www.khtt.net/.

If you live in or near London, you may want to check out this upcoming lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the details of which are as follows:

Arabic Calligraphy Throughout the Ages
Free Lunchtime Lecture
Wednesday 20 July 2011
13.15-14.00

Join Mourad Boutros, author of Arabic For Designers and Talking About Arabic (Dot Font), to hear about developments in Arabic calligraphy and typography and the rise in global awareness of Arab cultures.

Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, V&A
FREE, no booking required

For further information please visit:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1299/

If you are interested in participating, see the Open Call below, or visit the ikonoTV website.

Open Call
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2011
ikonoTV is inviting artists from all over the world to propose material for ikonoMenasa based on our current theme:

Calligraphy
A number of cultures throughout the world draw upon calligraphy as a prominent source of artistic practice from ancient times to most recent contemporary styles and movements. A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is “the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner” (Mediavilla 1996: 18). Calligraphy has also arguably become the most venerated form of Islamic art. Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish calligraphy is associated with abstract arabesque motives on the walls and ceilings of mosques as well as on the page. Contemporary artists in the Islamic world draw on the heritage of calligraphy to use calligraphic inscriptions or abstractions in their work.

The ikonoMenasa Open Call invites people from around the world to present their work inspired by or drawing directly upon calligraphic elements.

IkonoTV offers the opportunity of increasing visibility and awareness of the Menasa culture and artists from within this region. We will broadcast your work on HDTV via satellite on Arabsat. Arabsat offers a unique platform for artistic exchange reaching more than 16.5 million households in Northern Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe.

If you would like to participate, please send a link of your work to info@ikono.tv.

Preconditions and Requisites

We are looking for:

• Video Art under ten minutes
• High resolution images (JPG or TIFF format) for us to produce short films from
• Animations
• Motion graphics

We are not looking for:

• Documentaries
• Narrative videos
• Commercial content
• Total or partial nudity
• Religious scenes

All material must be accompanied by the following production information:

• Applicant’s Name
• Country
• Contact Information
• Year of Production

Full credit information and links to be shown on ikonomenasa.tv
Ideally, a short explanatory text will accompany your submission. The art works must be your property and you must own the full copyright. This applies to all visual and audio content.