Charlemagne, in 1100, was illiterate but sensed that the right alphabet would help him unify the many areas of Europe he had conquered. At his request, a monk devised the beautiful Carolingian script, which was easy to read and write, establishing a balance between eye and hand.
After a segue into the handsome but rigid and almost unreadable verticals of German High Gothic, Renaissance calligraphers returned to the Carolingian script for inspiration, developing the Humanist hand with its inner curves reminiscent of Italian archways, expressing the era’s sense of light and openness.
The design of the first printed typefaces drew on many of these scripts. Bash demonstrates each style with sureness and grace. She explains that she was part of a book arts Renaissance in the Bay Area in the 1970s, when calligraphy, bookbinding, and letterpress printing produced an explosion of artistic forms. She was further influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, with its ancient principles of heaven, earth, and human, giving a deep structure to her artistic practice.
She concludes by demonstrating a method of combining the calligraphic forms with these Buddhist principles, spontaneously composing and drawing a three-line poem. This practice is her way of using calligraphy to express that primal connection to the forces of nature.
In wide, rounded letters reminiscent of Uncial, she writes a heaven line, which she describes as a beginning, an entrance, a first voice on the page. The second line, earth, representing follow-through, connection, contrast, is in a more condensed active script, made contemporary with a brush. She uses the same style, but smaller and curving, in red ink, for the human line, expressing resolution, closing, intimacy, the heart:
WIDE OPEN
even in this dark room
something in me awakens.
To see more of Barbara Bash’s work, visit barbarabash.com.
