Paul Shaw Letter Design » Letterforms Study Group

Letterforms Study Group

The Letterforms Study Group is the name for visits by small groups (10 people maximum) I lead to libraries, archives, museums, and private collections to study manuscripts, books, posters, and ephemera related to calligraphy, lettering, and type. These visits usually have themes such as wood type, color, women in design, modernism, or ornament.

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3 December 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 14: James Clough

Calligraphic design by James Clough.
James Clough
The Letterforms Study Group letterpress workshop will begin in Milano with a day devoted to learning about pointed pen scripts. James Clough will deliver an illustrated lecture accompanied by a demonstration of Italienne and Roundhand scripts. He will also lead a visit to the Biblioteca Braidense or the Archive Bertarelli to see historical examples of pointed pen scripts.
Teaching sheet for corsivo inglese (Roundhand script) by James Clough.
James was born in England, but has lived and …
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25 November 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 3: Wood Type

First National Volunteers recruitment broadside (c.1863). Image courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
For most people wood type conjures up images of the Wild West, especially “Wanted” posters for outlaws. But such posters were a small part of the many broadsides printed with wood type in the 19th century. Broadsides for railroads, steamships, ferry services, theater and circus performances, Civil War recruitment, and political campaigns all utilized wood type because it was big, bold, and often decorative. Fat faces, Egyptians (slab …
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12 November 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 1: Script

The Letterforms Study Group workshop at the Tipoteca 2025 will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. It will focus on a rare example of wood type derived from script.
Script is a complex word. Like its German counterpart schrift, it has many meanings. To paleographers and calligraphers it denotes the writing styles found in hand written documents (logically called manuscripts from the Latin words manu “by hand” and scriptus “written” [past participle of the verb scribere “to …
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20 September 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 13: Scholarships

Double Great Primer Script from Specimen Book of the Letterpress, Stereotype, Electrotype, Wood-Cut Printing Establishment of John F. Trow (New York: c.1856). Image courtesy of the Letterform Archive.
In 2022 and 2023 I was able to secure scholarships for people under 35 to attend Legacy of Letters. The recipients of the scholarships included graduates of CooperType, the University of Reading, École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, the Politecnico di Milano, and one individual who had apprenticed with Alan Kitching.
For the …
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28 August 2024

Letterforms Study Group—7th session 9 May 2023: Record Album Covers

From left to right: Alex Tochilovsky, Marcos Baer, Jasmine Smalling, Scott Santoro, Hollis King, Sam Gold, Carrie Hamilton, and Tal Shub. Not pictured Abby Goldstein.
For the 7th session of the Letterforms Study group we returned to The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography at Cooper Union, the site of our first two sessions. This time the focus was on record album covers, using covers from the Center’s collection as well as ones from my collection and that of …
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27 August 2024

Letterforms Study Group—6th session 19 April 2023: Calligraphy and Lettering

The sixth session of the Letterforms Study Group was held at The Grolier Club, the famous New York-based bibliophile society, in their main exhibition space, on 19 April 2023. Jamie Elizabeth Cumby, the new club librarian, was our host. The attendees were Patricia Childers, Doug Clouse, Liz DeLuna, Sam Gold, Carrie Hamilton, Steve Kennedy, Claire Lukacs, Lucia McCreery, Rebecca Lehman Sprouse, Beth Tondreau, and Angela Voulangas.
The theme was calligraphy, lettering, and type. It was an ambitious theme and we failed …
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14 August 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 10

Reason No. 10—Small Group
The Letterforms Study Group workshop at the Tipoteca will be even more exclusive than the sessions I have run in New York City, San Francisco, and Oxford since November 2022. Those have been limited to 10 attendees. The Script Wood Type workshop will be restricted to 8 people. As of 15 August 2024, seven slots are still available.
I want to restrict the size of the group so that—paradoxically—the week-long experience will be both more intensive and more …
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14 July 2024

Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Wood Type Workshop Dates and Pricing update

New Double Pica Script (without segments of Letters or Combinations) from Thorowgood”s Specimen of New Printing Types (London: Fann Street Foundry, 1834). Thorowgood’s text is a riposte to Firmin Didot and Edmund Fry who promoted script typefaces composed of strokes, double letters, and other parts. Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The workshop will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. This is the planned itinerary:
ITINERARY
Day 0 | Sunday June 8—Milano
• Arrival
• Orientation
Day 1 …
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7 March 2024

Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Wood Type Workshop

Although Legacy of Letters came to an end with Legacy of Letters 2023: Letterpress Extravaganza, my engagement with letters inscriptional, calligraphic, and typographic in Italy is not over. In 2025 I will lead a workshop version of the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca. The workshop will be focused on investigating an unidentified wood type (see below) in the Tipoteca’s collection.
Capitals (from left to right: B A / O N M / Y Z) of the unidentified corsivo …
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