The Text and the Image: calligraphy in a book – a master class by Apollinaria Mishina

A master class by Apollinaria Mishina, a young calligraphy artist from Saint-Petersburg, was held at the Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy last Sunday, on January 26th.

One of Apollinaria’s favourite directions in art is the design of author's books: starting with the development of design, binding, font, making of illustrations and so on. This time the artist presented an exclusive work: pages from the Gospels of Mark book published by Vita Nova Publishing House in 2010. The literary and art edition consists of 110 illustrations, representing coloured etchings. The book’s text is handwritten with the especially developed font based on the half-uncial Cyrillic Book Hand under a strong leftward tilt and long ascenders.

Under the guidance of Apollinaria, the master class attendees tried to write ornate lettering and the half-uncial Cyrillic Book Hand. The next important thing to do was to draw up the text on a compositional level so it would deliver by sight the put-into-it sense.

Each of the meetings with calligraphy masters in our museum is a whole new way in the unlimited possibilities of calligraphy understanding.

Apollinaria is explaining the peculiarities of the uncial and the half-uncial Cyrillic Book Hands writing

The text and the form bond