In the book Natural Writing from 1714, George Shelley shows an interesting illustration with seven quills, strung along a curved line. In an accompanying text he gives instructions on how to cut quills for certain scripts, titled
“For the ASSISTANCE of LEARNERS I shall shew – The proper PEN for each HAND.”
Which means he wants to help beginners by showing them proper nib shapes for a selection of scripts.
As an exercise and a means of engaging intensively with the text I decided to copy it and re-draw the quills. Thank you to E. Clayton for pointing me to this particular illustration, it is indeed very informative.
The text is written in Italics with iron gall ink, of course using quills.
The book which I used as a reference can be found at Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Signatur OS 5052.
Yes, I did notice that I spelled Shelley wrong, it is missing an “e”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Humans make mistakes.
