Quills, part 18

Found this the other day: "Instructions for the cutting of a quill-feather in Ludivico Arrighi's La Operina da Imparare di scriuere littera Cancellarescha printed in Rome in 1522."

Scan from Ada Yardeni's The Book of Hebrew Script.

Yardeni's book, incidentally, is as described: "history, palaeography, script styles, calligraphy & design." Ada Yardeni's a combined paleography-scholar-graphic-designer, so as you might expect, there's a lot of brain food here. My copy is getting rather battered because it's generally the first thing I fish out of the shelf when I have general historical questions about script. It's not intended as a calligraphy source-book, so don't buy it expecting that. Buy it expecting to learn an awful lot about history, palaeography and script styles, with a bit of calligraphy thrown in, and you won't be disappointed.