My Top 5 Favorite Calligraphy Books

1. The Speedball Textbook: The Speedball textbook is a must-have for anyone from a calligraphy aficionado to master penman! It features 120-pages of exemplars and works of the best artists from across the world with different areas of expertise and skill. It's truly a great way to expose yourself to various scripts and understand what interests you. As a pointed pen enthusiast, I personally love the most recent 25th edition which has about 25 pages of enchanted pointed pen content. Also, I’m so proud to share that Sachin Shah, a renowned broad-edge calligrapher from India is a co-editor of the latest edition

2. Dr. Joseph Vitolo’s Handout: Dr. Joe Vitolo’s contributions to the calligraphy community are absolutely remarkable! This is single-handedly the best book to study copperplate calligraphy! The detail-oriented instructions, structural analysis of letterforms and embedded video tutorials make it a great resource. Click here to grab a free copy!

3. The Foundations of Calligraphy by Sheila Waters: If you’re interested in diving into broad edge calligraphy, this book will be your best friend. Sheila had been teaching summer workshops on calligraphy all across the US for 30+ years and has compiled all her knowledge into this book. It’s filled with insightful analysis of forms and construction, which requires you to learn and master every single alphabet and eventually the script!

4. Spencerian Script & Ornamental Penmanship | Learning To Write Spencerian: Michael Sull is one of the eight living master penmen in the world and is credited with the revival of Spencerian script in America, who better to learn from right?

I’ve personally had the honour of meeting him at IAMPETH’2020 and he very kindly signed my copy of his books (fangirling max)

His work is absolutely stunning and his passion for this script is unparalleled! These books will take you through the A-Z of learning this script, be it history, tools and supplies, letterforms or writing words.

5. Kana Matra by Achyut Palav: Achyut Palav is an Indian Masterpenman who has been practising the script of Devanagari for 40+ years. Devanagari is a 7th Century script originating from the ancient Bramhi script in the Indian subcontinent. The book takes you through this script in a methodological manner and to take it a notch high, it also covers the various commercial applications.

BONUS: The Art Of Illuminated Letters - If you've been intrigued by the enchanting artform of Gilding and want to try your hand at this, I highly recommend you check out this book.