It is such a stark contrast to the methods of written communication today. Hovering with bent shoulders, writers click
away on keyboards, leaving the "art" to the creation of passages that draw pictures for readers to envision. But the actual fonts?
They are produced, magically it seems, by the software in computers.
So
how did the Colonials write like that back in Early America? The students learned the
art with painstaking practice. With a feather quill and homemade ink,
these boys and girls refined their strokes in great flowing style that marked
an era of intricate penmanship—an art nearly forgotten.
The
script demonstrated by John Hancock was known as the “Boston Style of Writing,”
taught by Abiah Holbrook, who was esteemed as a great master of the pen. Writing
masters were universally honored in every community, according to Home and
Child Life in Colonial Days by Shirley Glubock. In 1745, Mr. Holbrook had
220 scholars in one school, learning this art of penmanship. John Hancock was
one of Holbrook’s most notable students.
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| Galls on a tree |
It’s difficult to imagine all the
intricacies of this type of written communication. It required a sharp quill
with the feather still attached, usually from a goose. Some managed to perfect
the art of sharpening the point of the quill with a knife—the origin of the
word, “pen-knife.” Those not wanting to sharpen their own could have them done
by professionals who stationed themselves on streets. These gentlemen were
called “stationers.”
And
then there was the ink. There were various recipes that produced the blue
liquid that dried black and eventually faded to a brown tone. An essential ingredient of the formula was galls—odd swellings on oak trees that were a
natural reaction to parasites—combined with copperas, which is an iron
compound. This produced an ink that has lasted through hundreds of years,
making letters from long ago still visible to the naked eye. And beautifully
visible at that. The script makes any document look more art than narrative.
One
recipe of olde to make “excellent ink:”
Raine
water 3 gallons, of white wine vinegar a quart, gaules two pounds, gum arabeck
one pound, pomegranate pills one quarter of a pound, all these bruised but not
beat too small, copporus two ounces, this will be ready the sooner, if it stand
nearby the fire, or in the sun.”
