your turn #2

codex gigas, the devil, 12th century bohemia (the codex gigas is known as the devil's bible) 

hi class. pick a post, theme, idea, from yesterday's class and develop it.  remember: be original. do your own search, no idle talk, no echo chamber. avoid repeating what someone else posted, unless you take it someplace else. 

some general points:

1- history is about epochs, epochs are self-contained (@ weltanschauung level). say, you want to understand gothic style, circa 1222. why do you see a pointed arch in churches along with pointed rib vaults and flying buttresses and stained glass windows? first thing, leave your 2022 glasses behind. what works in 2022 is a hindrance in 1222. learn the language, eat the food, smell the air, make friends, learn the rituals & make no judgment. becoming a 1222 folk yourself is the only way to learn. surprise! as you make your way back you learn 2022 doesn't feel the same anymore. 

2- no epochal process is planned by human agency. we're inside the process ourselves and cannot cherrypick. whatever happens comes in an avalanche already above us. there's so much we carry from ancestors that we can't even begin to fathom. 

3- in art and design, it's THE MARK that changes --all by itself-- as it's repeated over and over. 

4- it's time to think of typeface! (all objets have --at least two-- faces, you just have to find them). 

go ahead.

unexpected family ties: new roman --> uncial --> carolingian --> old english --> bastarda

New Roman

we know that uncial (a majuscule) develops from Old Roman cursive. 

actually what happens above is that the stroke of the letter is facilitated by vellum (i.e., an example where technology creates style) a new material (papyrus made characters more angular). 

the rest is a matter of following convention that is taken to be in good taste (just like 19th century calligraphy vs. our "to each its own" handwriting).

see how the font gets more slender and taller from the visigothic on to the textura quadrata to change again to humanist and times.  

which letters drive the elongation? 

clearly "b" "d" "h""l" masts! & "q" "p" descenders, the "o" becomes eliptical, as well as the loops, as if the typeface is squeezed from both sides.   

the pair visigothic-luxeuil gets taller to get flat again with beneventan-caroline-insular to change again with protogothic-textura quadrata-fraktur.

"a" is a simple loop open at the top, "b" appears to be back to front as the bow is on the left. "u" and "v" are identical and consist of a particularly insignificant little bent line. 

Certain letters show the particular forms that would become features of the early medieval book scripts, such as the raised "e," long s and open "g" with no closed loops. There are two forms of "n," this particular hand retaining a majuscule N in most cases.

Greek Uncial? circa. 800 aD

Perhaps developing in second half of the third century, the uncial script gains popularity during the fourth century. Significantly a large number of the extant uncial texts were Christian manuscripts. Uncial would supplant the rustic capitals as the most popular script from the fifth century.

Carolingian minuscules 10th century aD.

Old English, insular miniscule, 12th century. This document is a charter or writ of Henry I confirming lands and privileges to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury

Derived from both Gothic Textura and cursive hands, this particular example of Bastarda is quite formal and precise, and although the letters sometimes touch within the words, it is not cursive as each is written separately. It looks like a book hand, although in this instance it is used on a very formal and elaborate document.

forgot to address this... uppercase vs. lowercase (my preference)

 half uncials or lower case

we know the aesthetics of hanlf-uncials (minuscules) hark back to stroke & surface: quick reed pen ink trace over parchment.

parchment are pieces of papyrus "cut"  in oblogn pieces and put together. this act of cutting and piecing together are the proto-books of today (people actually carried a bunch of pieces, since sheets may slip from the bunch the next step was to saw them together in a loose bind).
 
lower case is a mark of brevity & legibility. 

here is the family:

french lower case (merovingian)

 

iberic lower case (visigothic)

italian lower case (the beneventan in southern italy)

late roman cursive

irish "insular" lowercase 

brevity means vernacular, merchant, petit-burgeois (not a bad word yet), secular, science, young. 

see how grammar is influenced by aesthetics. capital letters are places in a syntactic paragraph. later, they become codified "marks" for proper noun, proper adjective, first person pronouns and interjections. usage determines differentiation.