Saturday, October 07, 2006

Skillz

Had I been born in, say, 1870, I would move to Columbus, Ohio and attend the Zanerian Art School, and become an ornamental penman.














Back in the day, penmanship was an art. These next two examples are done completely by hand. These graduates of the Zanerian College were required to pen their own diplomas!

















Some of this script isn't even writing; it's much closer to actually drawing the letters, or engraving them.
And here is my favorite:















Nice, legible penmanship is no longer regarded as an important skill set for life, much less ornamental penman mastery.

I want to be a Master Penman. Hire me, someone! I'll pen your post-it notes, love letters, and wedding invitations for you! Forget Evite - pay me to do it. I'm not as talented as Francis B. Courtney, the Pen Wizard, but I have several fonts you can choose from.

I'm dead serious.

5 comments:

The Stockwells said...

I love your hand writing! I am a huge huge fan of it and I am always looking at peoples hand writing to see how they measure up....yours is definately one of the top five. I am going to need to think of something I can hire you for that has to do with writing. Sadly, I am already married so I cant hire you to do my invitations :) Oh! Random story....my sister (Jana) called me tonight and said, doesnt your friend Rose work for an architect??? and I was like "yeah", and she said that she was talking to her pastors daughter on the way home from youth convention and Christine was telling her this story about how her family went to Hawaii on a trip with an architect that was working on their church. Jana said that the whole time she was thinking to herself that it sounded so familier and then it dawned on her, you worked for that guy! Isnt that random....I dont even know how she would remember that you worked for him or that you take your clients to Hawaii!!! So we were talking about you tonight :) Hope all is well! Do you still work for the architect??? Sorry..I cant remember his name. :)

Jenni said...

Those are really fun Rose :) Now I want to see some of your work, if I'm going to hire you I'll have to see something in print first ;) Love you!

jennifer joy staab said...

Can you pen my grocery list? I want it to be pretty.

jennifer joy staab said...

nice!! it was prophetic!!

Katrina Hope said...

Hmm, If I ever write a novel... I'll be keeping this in mind. :)