We had renowned SSI/CLAS Fellow Vivien Lunniss visit us in October to teach a wonderful workshop using a refreshing approach to Black Letter – not the usual Gothic Textura as you’d imagine. But funnily enough that is what we started with to remind us of a classic style. Swiftly moving on, we studied examples of work by Ward Dunham and Friedrich Neugebauer, who took two very contrasting approaches to breaking the stereotype of Black Letter. Taking some of their forms as our models we wrote the alphabet and then words to achieve dramatic interpretations of words. We had to solve letter clashes or create a letter we had no example of. And we moved away from Black to Glorious Colour and put our version of the two styles together. This was such fun to do.

Work from the members at the workshop.