When was calligraphy invented

You dip your brush into the ink then lift it up and bring it down, pressing it lightly to the page. Brush strokes dance back and forth between light and heavy lines, curving and twisting slowly into perfect shapes and symbols. Though some of us may only have the artistic talent to write in chicken-scratch scrawl, there are many out there who continue to turn handwriting into an art.

The term calligraphy, or the art of beautiful handwriting, has its roots and origins in many different countries around the world. In East Asian countries such as China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea, this form of art began with pictograms and ideographs made on the surfaces of jades and oracle bones.

According to Entity Mag , this style is thinner and more fluid than that of the East Asian style, though it was influenced by Persian and Arabic styles. This style was reserved for penning religious texts and expressing art in various forms. This was when a clear distinction was created between normal handwriting and more elaborate forms of script writing. One may assume that the creation of printing ended the tradition of hand-written books, but according to Brittanica , publications such as musical scores, scientific notation, and other specialized works continued to be handwritten well into the 19th century.

Traditional styles, as you can imagine, have been developed over time and are meant to be an exact science. Each letter has a specific height, angle, measurement, and tool s required to accomplish it. Manuscript Pen Company has catered for them all, tying in these historic styles with modern design, ensuring that no matter your writing style or artistic creativity, you can create a unique writing format that you love.

Please note that by subscribing to our newsletter, you agree to the terms set out in our Privacy Policy. Allow Cookies. Industry experts since Contact us. Subscribe to Our Newsletter. It is certainly difficult to pinpoint the origin in East Asian culture due to the nature of the art form. Long before calligraphy pens came along, people were engraving characters and words on to objects for centuries.

The brushwork of ancient Eastern calligraphy came before Qin Shi Huang established character unification, where he essentially created a standardized alphabet of characters. The reign also saw the creation of the Lishu style of clerical script.

This era of calligraphy is attributed to BC onwards. As the dynasties and eras continued, the art form developed with new styles of scripts and methods, with the Kaishu style — still used today — appearing between Many of these stroke patterns and shapes continue into Kangxi, and subsequently Kanji and other East Asian scripts that are in use today.

The development of calligraphy and writing styles across China, Japan and other East Asian civilizations follows a fairly clear path.

Around the same time that Qin Shi Huang brought in his own unification and calligraphy standardized in China, a whole other style was emerging in India.

Kharosti was then adopted across Central Asia until around the 8th century. The history of the script in India also shows an interesting progression of techniques. Yet, this is simply due to a preference for other materials like palm leaves, which are more durable. Western calligraphy in Europe is another sub-genre that developed independently and while the best examples of calligraphy on paper and artwork are not seen until the first century, the Latin script alphabet appeared in BC.

It all began as a simple of basic capital to be inscribed on buildings and developed into the more elaborate, artistic religious scripts we think of today.