Masgrimes Journal

In this post, I’m excited to introduce you to Walker Chen, an inspiring member of our modern penmanship community who has demonstrated an outstanding taste for fine penmanship in recent years. Whether he is painstakingly cutting and wielding goose quills, dashing off bold ornamental signatures, precisely identifying musical notes by ear, or conquering the English […]

Is there a calligrapher in your life? This is the ultimate calligraphy gift guide for buying a well-researched calligraphy gift that hits the spot every time. I understand that buying special interest gifts can be really difficult—no matter how well intentioned. Calligraphers, like many artists, tend to buy the exact materials and tools that they want for very specific reasons, making gift-giving a tricky task!

Earlier this month, the Internet Archive suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, resulting in a loss of services that lasted nearly a week. While the Archive came back online on 10/24/24, the lack of access to historic penmanship material during this outage shines an important light on the fragility of the preservation efforts […]

A generally accepted trinity of desirable qualities in the penmanship ethos is that of rapidity, legibility, and ease. Writing styles that possess these three qualities are likely considered “good” by the general public. Similar to the old saying about “good, fast, and cheap,” certain styles de-emphasize one of these three aspects in favor of the other two. Some styles may be legible and rapid, but not easy, while are others are easy and rapid, but not legible, etc.

Over the last ten years, I’ve written with oblique holders from many different penmakers. I’ve taken the opportunity to ask to try the holders belonging to students in my workshops. I’ve even made several myself. One thing that I know for certain is: A good holder is one that is well adjusted for its owner.

Gretchen Caldwell is a mother, biochemist, paramedic, dog-trainer, and Dreaming In Script Merit Alum. Over the last six months, We’ve watched Gretchen struggle and grow with a number of different projects and skills as she has progressed into quite the penman! We’re proud to present a student feature about her progress and thoughts on her […]