Book Review: Nib & Ink : The New Art of Modern Calligraphy

Here in the studio, we absolutely love this book! We always love finding out about modern calligraphy books to add to our growing collection of reference material.

We saw on Lamplighter London’s Instagram account that Chiara Perano was publishing a new handbook: Nib & Ink: The New Art of Modern Calligraphy.

After receiving the book, there was a fight, on who was going to get to it first! We all had the very same feeling on Chiara Perano’s personal style of calligraphy. We loved it! Thanks Chiara!

We know we have gone on about how much we loved the book but here is why. it looks absolutely amazing from cover to cover, it is beautifully laid out and is easy to follow. A great aspect of this book is the friendly chatty, stylish and imaginative approach on how it is written. Everything is clearly explained for a beginner and inspirational for the more advanced. This is an attractive, well-produced, medium-sized paperback, and there is lots of space for practicing your letters.

The book starts off by going through a useful introduction to the basics of the craft, and of modern calligraphy but all done in a friendly and approachable style. It guides you through getting started to practicing simple strokes, then moving onto letters, and later in the book joining the letters together. The book also gives you lots of information about the different tools that you can use and what everything is called which is always useful. Do not be concerned if you are worried about how to use the book as it gives tips on how to do it!

Another nice aspect of the book is all the ideas contained towards the back of the book. A section within the book is based on projects, on how you can extend your new modern calligraphy skills, and create some beautiful personal touches to hand-crafted stationery. For every new skill that is learned, it is always great to receive inspiration, as no one wants all the effort to go to waste. We all felt that the gift tags should be mentioned within this book review because gift tags are always written and attached to those gifts you give over to your loved ones. We always enjoy creating new gift tags to include in our shop as we find this is a great way to use modern calligraphy to jazz up different occasions whilst allowing our customers too add their extra personal touch.

This book is a must for those who want to learn the art of beautiful handwriting - something long forgotten these days. So time to put those iPhones down and use the fun interactive element to enjoy writing again, you just need to ‘give it a go!’ This book is a must for those who want to learn the art of beautiful handwriting - something long forgotten these days. It most definitely did not let us down!

Although we do have one slight criticism of how the book has been produced. The way the spine of the book has been created prevents the worksheet pages from lying flat making it easier to practice the letter formation. Also you will have to wait for the pages to dry before moving onto the next page. The use of including removable practice sheets might have been an idea although this could be frustrating, as they would end up all over the place, so we feel the use of a different book binding technique would be the answer.

Despite that, we still think this is such a great book and goes into so much detail that it is perfect for getting started in learning Modern Calligraphy. We would highly recommend it and have already informed many creative’s to purchase it. We are really looking forward to carrying on using it to work on and improve the calligraphy skills and develop styles amongst the Creative Avenue studio.

A great fun interactive book bringing calligraphy back to life and up to date!