What is calligraphy?

I asked several people and got a number of answers: look lik e a cryptic crossword, its a piece of objective art, its a mystical painting. There wa no consensus. Perhaps calligraphy is all the above statements an art which makes one feel cent red; the creation of which leads to inner growth and maturity. The Chinese raked it an art above painting over 2000 years ago, and the Persian painters elevated it to a semi-mystical status in Islamic painting. The dictionary meaning of calligraphy is the art of decorative handwriting. The literal translation from Greek means beautiful handwriting a communication of id eas aesthetically. The aesthetics of graphics at the cost of clarity if necessar y. To my mind it is to the eyes what music is to the ears and as someone put it C alligraphy is to writing, what eloquence is to speech. Over the centuries calligraphy decorated books and manuscripts, buildings, wall panels and works of art paintings and murals. In recent years calligraphy has al so been adapted to textiles. Dress designers have used calligraphy to perpetuate messages in a simple languag e. The aim is social reformation. One such message reads Dope is evil. In India as well designers have employed it as a medium of communication. They h ave used it to express their thoughts, their ideas. Calligraphy today is being u sed on textiles, fabrics, ready to wear clothes and accessories. Satya Paul, a l eading Indian designer compared in the international design world with Zandra Rh odes, Yogi Yamamot, Issey Miyaki, Ralph Lauren, began his work in 1966 and has t ouched the nerve chord of designing creating a sensation. Designing he says is a medium of expression involving the mind and the heart. Call igraphy is an intense graphic art. Every stroke and letter has a graphic beauty and form. His calligraphic designer sarees and fabrics area rage worldwide. Usin g this art form with tremendous flair and beauty his work is intriguing and inte resting, a visual delight. He began with the idea that clothes should become living experience of an inner growth and journey. For him art and fashion have gone hand in hand and he has ele vated calligraphy from the platform of art and aesthetics to the platform of obj ective art. Perhaps the balance of art and fashion is beginning now. The emergence of calligraphy is like an economy chart from pictograms to ideogra ms to phonograms. From the human desire to express, grew the need to give sound a structure and shape. Picture writing was the first step in the long evolutiona ry process which ended in the formation of the alphabet. The script of the world in their earliest forms date as far back as 20000 B.C. when they were scratched or painted on rock, wood or bone. However modern calligraphy is done with a bro ad edged, square cut pen held art angle. This produces thick descending diagonal s and thin ascending diagonals known as curves. How did man first create calligraphy? What instruments did he use? the European have used the quill as a writing tool. The quill has and is so flexible that it responds to the slightest touch. Quills the feathers of the primary flight of swans, turkeys or geese for ; the duck and raven for normal writing; and crows for fine work. For centuries such finesse are made from large writing

The Chinese artist used the same brush for painting and calligraphy. It consiste d of a wooden or bamboo handle with bristles of animal hair arranged to form an extremely fine point. Their writing was mainly black the ink made of pine root a nd glue. In many cases these inscriptions consisted of a poem along with a descr iption of the circumstances under which the painting was created.

In Islam along with illustrations of flowers, artists used geometric patterns. T he human artist formed the lettering initially with a brush and then called a cr aftsman to cut it. This style reflects the intricacy of the use of chisel more t han the writing. The chisel starts at the surface and goes into the material to form a deeper channel of the main stroke. The best example is the quadrate at th e foot of the Emperor Tryans Column in Rome made in A.D. 114. There is an architectural geometrical quality within the quadrata style accounti ng for the harmony created when lettering is used on stone. The dimensions and p roportions of height and width are of great importance the best example of this is the Taj Mahal where the Holy Koran is written all along the front portal. When adapted to textiles in India calligraphy has been used in several forms. Th e Roman, the Hindi or Sanskrit, the Persian, the Chinese, the geometrical and th e numerical patterns have been used to give the fabric a unique touch. The desig ner sarees by Satya Paul have become a rage in the cities. There is a fusion of art and the creation of a new trend is on the horizon.