This year the CLAS Festival of Calligraphy was held at Warwickshire College in Leamington Spa.

The CLAS Festival of Calligraphy gives everyone a chance to indulge in calligraphy and lettering. World class tutors teach a variety of courses in lettering. This year’s tutors were Mary Noble, Manny Ling, Ian Garrett, Lin Kerr, Clare Whittaker and Vivien Lunniss

The workshops take place during two 2 1/2 day sessions with Monday afternoon free.

We were delighted to be asked to attend Monday afternoon. As usual it is very hard to decide what Calligraphy equipment and materials to take to an event. We can’t take it all, and you guessed it we were asked for one type of nib, which we had left behind. Another dilemma we have is what quantities of stock to take. Thankfully we got this about right. We only sold out of three items and one of these we had limited stocks because the supplier is also out of stock.

It was great meeting lots of keen calligraphers in a relaxed environment. You could tell the calligraphers were really enjoying the Festival, because every single one of them who wrote us a cheque for payment could not remember what the date was!

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There has already been a post on this blog about preparing nibs before you start to use them. Using a new nib frequently causes problems. Only the other day I spoke to a customer who was experiencing difficulties try to get the ink flow from a new nib. After a chat they followed the instructions on the preparing a nib post and later emailed back and said it worked.

Another method of preparing a nib is to use a naked flame. With this method, the nib is passed back and forth through a naked flame. I have tried this method and the results seem to be the same as using boiling water, so I have always stuck with that. However, the following email extracts prove it can be worth trying different ways.

Back in May, a customer contacted us with the ink flow problem. Attached to their email was some photographs that clearly showed the problem.

“I am attaching these pictures to illustrate my problem with this nib.
You sent me a Leonardt 33 nib. But, as you can see I can’t seem to write a single word.
I have ink on the nib but no flow at all. What am I not doing wrong? Any suggestion would be helpful.”

As the first photograph clearly shows, the ink was just sitting on the nib. You can see the tip of the nib is still dry. So we recommended the boiling water method. The following day we received an update.

“Unfortunately , it is not working for me. The nib cannot write at all.. despite the soaking.”

We then suggested the flame method. A couple of days later we receive another email and photograph. It had worked.

What I had learnt from this was that it is worth trying different methods on the same nib. Just because once in the past the flame method had been tried and the result had not appeared to be any different to the boiling water method I had not used it since. However, if one method does not work, try another.

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We have now finished the process of changing hosts. This morning the IP addresses were changed, which is why we were down for a few hours. Changing Host and IP address can take 4-40 hours for the new details to fully migrate. So it is possible you may not be able to visit our website for a while longer.
If our web pages do not appear in your browser, it is worth pressing the ‘Ctrl’ + F5 button together to force the browser to refresh the page. There is a chance your browser is displaying an older page view from your browsing history.

We apologise for this inconvenience, but changing hosts will improve our service to you.

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We have been working on the design of the store pages.
A few weeks ago we updated the look of the homepage to show images and brief descriptions of the main shopping sections of the website. We also added a right-hand column, which showed links to this blog, Twitter and Facebook plus a form to sign-up to our mailing list.
This new look has been applied to all the store pages. So the sections have become a bit more visual and the social network links are present on most pages. There is still a bit of tidying up to do and a few more images are needed to complete the job.

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The aim of this special group is to promote the understanding, appreciation, study, practice and creative extension of a period of American artistic endeavour now regarded as the Golden Age of Ornamental Penmanship. This outstanding period of American penmanship flourished for seventy-five years from approximately 1850 to 1925 when its demise was brought about by changes in commercial practice and the invention of the typewriter though it continued to a lesser extent into the 1950s.

The Spencerian Study Group holds two major workshops a year in the City of York. Meetings are held at St Lawrence’s Hall, Lawrence Street, Walmgate, York. Fixed dates are the second Saturday in April and the last Saturday in September. Between times, members are encouraged to develop their penmanship skills by not only corresponding with others, but exploring creative ideas in a modern context from study day initiatives. Tools and materials are readily available through the group.

POSTAL MEMBERSHIP has now been running for two years for those enthusiasts interested in this period of penmanship yet for whatever reason are unable to attend study group meetings. Members receive the quarterly ‘Spencerian Review’ full of news, interesting articles and scans of original penmanship and calligraphy from the period. If you are at all interested in becoming a member of our postal group then please get in touch.

Brian G Walker

Download Spencerian Study Group information sheet for further details

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