Inky fingers

This time last week I was excited to be taking a trip to London Town, and the British Library in particular, to visit two exhibitions of note: namely the CLAS annual Art and the Letter Exhibition which takes place alongside their AGM and features work from Fellows and Lay-members alike, and the BL's own Evolving English exhibition. Both of these I had been looking forward to for a long time, and neither were disappointing.

Had I known that I would be allowed to take pictures of (some of) the work exhibited at the CLAS exhibition I would have taken my camera along to get some decent resolution images of those pieces I found most inspiring. Alas, I hadn't been so organised, so ended up with four snaps taken with my little 'phone camera as an aide memoire. The Fellows' room and some of the lay-members work was truly awe-inspiring, and I quickly began to feel more than a little overwhelmed and disheartened at the idea of ever achieving such beautiful results with my own writing. After a closer look at some of the 'Beginner' and 'Intermediate' entries, however, I found my spirits rising with the realization that some of my lettering (although not incorporating any design elements) is well on the way to being as good as some of that on display (a 'Beginner' by these rules can have as many as 3 years experience). So there's hope for me yet, and I look forward to entering a piece of my own next year.
I also met Timothy Noad - one of the CLAS Fellows exhibiting - who some years ago completed a commission for my sister, which I always admire every time I visit, and which hangs in pride of place in her home. He was very kind and gave me a beautiful card of his to send to her.

After a quick sandwich and an ENORMOUS piece of cake in the BL's cafe, I sauntered through to the Evolving English exhibition. I have always been fascinated by the use and abuse of the English language, and as my day job is in a wonderful library in Cambridge I am always happy to see other librarys' exhibitions and manuscripts on display, knowing a little about the hard work that goes into such things. Evolving English is an exhibition of epic proportions, even for somewhere like the BL, and is incredibly well thought out. I got to see the earliest written version of Beowulf, I listened to interviews with folk from across the country and round the world talking about their use of the English language, there was a competitive quiz about what you'd seen and read in the exhibition (I won! by virtue of being the only person playing. And I had help), and best of all, I spent 20 minutes chortling my way through 90 years of comic sketches particularly relating to the (mis)use of language - think the Two Ronnies Fork 'andles sketch. My favourite by far was the Monty Python 'Argument Clinic' which I had never seen before, but feel the need to share here:

Aside from all this excitement I spent a very happy morning this morning playing with my new pot of Higgins Eternal Ink which arrived from Scribblers yesterday. It's SO much better than the ink I had been using for my Copperplate - it's the right consistency and beads and blobs far less than anything I've tried to date. Much less frustrating :-) I'm looking forward to doing some more scrawling over the weekend, including trying out a couple of new Speedball nibs in small sizes.