Paul Antonio Scribe

Christmas Card 2011

2011-12-15T03:47:00.000-08:00

Ah! a Blog again!

This is what our Christmas Card is like this year.

This year I thought I would make something beautiful. What I did not anticipate was it jumping the gun and kick starting out plans to launch the stationery company next year. We have already sold 30 packs of them. And of the 30, 15 packs had to be opened up and hand addresses and messages written in.

The cards are A4 folded down to A5, portrait. 350 GSM, GFSmith Colourplan Racing Green. Envelopes are C5, deep wallet flap, Colourplan Bright Red.

The cards are for sale – they are £25 for a pack of 5. And we also offer a hand addressing service is a script of your choice. Usually it is our Quick Script III (the slanted quick script) in white ink on the red envelopes. But we have used Copperplate in white as well.

The inside can be personalised in gold ink with a message of your choice – for an added fee. Cost depends on the volume of text to be written in.

So here is the process at Mount Street

The cards with various of our scripts

Card Detail

In Pack

But the true joy of the cards is seeing them from a distance, the column of holly looks like it is moving up the centre of the card. Naturally this is tricky to see as the engraving of the front is so raised it is difficult to put it down, feeling the texture between your fingers is really something special.

Evening Standard Dec 2011

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We have some work in the Evening Standard today! Thanks to the wonderful Simon at Charles Burnard see

www.charlesburnard.com

Simon styled a shoot centred around Made in Chelsea’s Cheska. The images I saw from Simon were so beautifully shot – cant wait to see it.

I thought I would post images of what I sent in – they are only there for you to see a close up shot of the work we provided.

All of the text and addresses are made up.

Thanks Simon!

April - 2011

2011-05-28T09:04:00.001-07:00

Once again the blog is late – I am going to have to get someone in to start doing this – but seriously, we have little images of what was done in May as it was fairly standard work with the standard work – Placecards, placement envelopes, escort cards and envelope and invitation addressing. Those were the standard, usual things. But the reason there are not that many photographs is there seemed to be a proliferation of people wanting us to sign Nondisclosure Agreements. And with the events leading up to May I am sure you can work out at least two of them on your own.

This was a massive bit of paper I was asked to work on. It was a present to a client’s husband. Am looking forward to seeing an image of it framed and in situ.

Last month ended a 10 week course I was studying on. The course was run by........... on Arabic Decoration. It was spectacular. It also gave me so much food for thought and I started to work on incorporating some of the intent of the designs, and in some cases, the designs themselves, into my western calligraphy. This was to be the crux of the work I am seemed to be aiming for on the Society of Scribes and Illuminators Advanced Training Scheme, of which this is my third and final year. The course is about self development and why you do calligraphy. It has been a real challenge, a wonderful one at that. I wont post any images as yet though, well not until I have some finished work.

The month began with us finishing off a job for the delightful Amaury at Ralph Lauren. Such a gentleman to deal with. The first week saw us finalising the designs for Joelle Rashti’s wedding. I think I might have to do a separate blog on that.

Mathew Bates has moved from Fulham Palace to ‘the Royal Society of Arts’ and we are looking forward to work with him there. And the suppliers list grows!.

We had a job to do for Dior as well which was a rushed job, but it did give me the opportunity to work with Charlotte again.

A last minute change due to printing issues, Victoria Watson, a good friend of the lovely Daniel Marks at The Communication Store got in touch with us to deal with her invitations, she is also dealing with Javier and Tony at By Appointment Only Design for her floral details. Hearing of us from two companies made her approach us about her invitations. We were only too happy to assist, the timing was a little tricky as everything needed to be done quickly. I do try to remind clients that the faster you want something the longer it seems to take as so much needs to be pinned down before agreeing to handwriting an invitation. It was also the first time that we printed all the invitations for a job in the studio on our super duper digital printer! We were happy with the results, but more importantly, so was she and her fiancé. Here is half the invitation to show the mix of scripts used.

This week also saw me prepping for a meeting with some publishers who have asked me to write a book on calligraphy. I must confess it is something I had been thinking of for about a year but the sheer scale of the task, and running the studio, made me shy away from it. My mother proceeded to point out to me the nature of this opportunity in that it presented itself and I needed to take it. Alistair was so supportive but a little concerned about the book and my existing work load! Lindy and Isheeta came to see me about my ideas and we all seemed to get over excited. They were great in showing me what an outline would look like and how I needed to plot what I needed to do. I need to add here whilst we were discussing, the feeling of an axe hanging over my head! There is so very much to. I was asked to prepare the table of contents and a sample chapter of one of the scripts by the second week of May. So no pressure there!

Midweek saw me at the wonderful Peggy Porschen Cake Shop to talk about some lettering they are thinking of using for some signage. It is not necessarily a good thing when creative people get together our brains start churning, out came the writing tools and Peggy, Bryn and I were laughing like children.

Wednesday evening saw me at the Bluebird Wedding Event organised by the beautiful Sarah Widdowson. What a great event, saw so many people including the lovely Miranda Eason from Cosmo Bride and You & Your Wedding. She promptly introduced me to Stephanie Stafford new editorial assistant who interviewed me for the online magazine. I ended up disclosing some very hush-hush information about the business which I will tell you about soon enough.

Zoe Couper’s invitations and envelopes arrived. They were printed using our Spencerian Script and needed the names being inserted in the text – and that meant matching the colour they printed in. Something I sort of take for granted. It was not always that I could match a colour exactly – it has taken about 5 years to know when it is going to be correct. So, Zoe’s invitations and envelopes needed to be done and ready by the end of the week. Printed by Downey and Co on Vellum White Colourplan. They made up the envelopes and lined them in blue – genius. Their work is ALWAYS so well executed.

Last year we started working with Amanda Henry for her ‘Save The Dates’ and now came time to produce the invitations. She opted for ivory on dark grey card! The envelopes were addressed to suit, in ivory on dark grey envelopes. We were so pleased with them, as was she!

More certificates to do for the Princes Trust – these are all handwritten in delicate copperplate script.

And Joelle Rashti’s job finalised and sent to print. The main invitation to be diestamped in gold on Vellum White 700gsm, the other two invitations to be letterpressed in antique pink rose on Mist Colourplan 540gsm, RSVP card in white on dark brown, RSVP envelope in dark brown on white, and the envelopes in white Spencerian on Nubuck envelopes. Bliss.

Thea Darricotte formally of Brides Magazine, now at Conde Nast Traveller, had her envelopes arrived as well, did some slanted quick script to get them out and off quickly. Congrats Thea!

Royal Academy’s invitations and RSVP cards were addressed and send off to Bethan at the RA for them to go out as well

The week ended with a call from Harriet from Party Planners. So lovely to deal with. And a call from the girls from Kasimira Party Organisers to do all the stationery for a wedding – two invitations handwritten out and a map hand drawn with handwritten text. I also got a bollocking from my mother. Two months ago I was interviewed by a television crew for a documentary on the Royal Wedding for Living TV in the US.

My mother lives in Trinidad and Living TV is shown there. She only caught a little bit of the interview but it showed again on the Friday so she was able to see all of it. I had a copy sent to me and will see if I can cut the bit with me in it to put on line.

Week three started with 1000 envelopes coming in from Selfridges to be done in one of our modern scripts. It also had a very sad note to it as one of our calligraphers, Nicola, had to deal with the passing of her mother. It was a blow to all of us as we love Nicola so much and knowing she was upset made focused working much more tedious. Sarah also saw a death in her family. Both funerals were planned for the week of the 26^th.

The end of the week saw Sarah reminding me that we had a stand at the RSVP show, something which I knew was happening but simply forgot! I nearly fell out my chair when she reminded me and thus began furious preparation for work for the show.

Setup was the 18^th the show was the 19^th and 20^th and we then had Friday off. Sometimes holidays are more of a hindrance. Of course the following week would be the Royal Wedding and yet more holidays. I worked all Easter and right through the short week and all through the Royal Wedding celebrations.

The short week also saw us putting the finishing touches on Britta Kjerkegaard’s (The Couture Gallery) menus, place cards and placement envelopes. We also spoke with Stefania at Ganisbury and Whiting, did a design for Polly at Brides for a mock up of a possibly invite for Zara Philips and one for Kate Moss! Nigel at the Fishmoners’ Hall and a bevy of brides about place cards, envelopes and the like.

And there I was thinking the month was quite!

March - 2011

2011-04-11T01:14:00.001-07:00

March has come and gone and I am only just beginning to realise that going away from the studio, and out of London is probably to best way forward, when it comes to writing the blog! Much has happened this month but off the top of my head I cannot say what. There have been a few things of which I am not allowed to speak and a few things of which I can speak of but only until they are done and dusted and one major thing once the contract is signed – for which I am ecstatic!

February ended with the paper work going through for the setting up of ‘The Bespoke Stationery Company’ which is the stationery side of the business, so more complications for Sarah to deal with not to mention the technical issues of purchasing materials, and VAT registration! Can you believe – I am still in shock! Thankfully, Gary, my business manager at the Bank and Steve, the wonderful accountant, held my hand through it all, still don’t understand a word of what they said but hey! I had a film crew in the studio, once again, filming me writing for a documentary on what might be used for The Royal Wedding, to be aired in the US. Hope I don’t get into trouble for that!

We finished off Olivia Paton and Mark Townsend’s wedding invitations in style and the loved them. It was a real chance to embed written calligraphy in the printed calligraphy text to create something really special. Since then we have done two other invitation of a similar type. Look closely at the names ‘Jonathan & Kelly’ there is a slight colour variation due to the flash but in real life you could not tell what was written in!

End of Feb also saw us still sending out emails from contact from the DSW. So many enquiries but how many will turn into actual jobs? Really makes me think of streamlining our various pdfs of the many things which can be done, they do need to be image rich and that means a lot of writing and photography.

March saw me changing out tack a little. We had a really unpleasant situation where a bride became increasingly problematic making unreasonably demands. It got to the point where both Sarah and I was at the end of our rope with her and then she sent an email that stunned us both by asking if she was unhappy with the work what was the procedure. I told her that if our reputation and that level of work seen in the pdf was not good enough they it was better she went elsewhere. This was an unfortunate, but important decision, my management consultant friends said. I guess we cant please everyone and if you get the sense that it is not going to be worth it, walk away!

The first week also saw regular clients Polo Ralph Lauren come to us to get some calligraphy done. They have these invitations which need names, a contact and a number all centred, and centred address labels too. It is an EXTREMELY difficult job to do because of the centring. Then the invitations arrived and they were enormous but dealing with Anne-Charlotte is always fun. We also got to deal with a new guy called Amaury, lots of laughs.

A little mix up as well that drove us nuts – two clients same month – one called Amanda Henry and the other Annabel Hendry – well you could only imaging the confusion which ensued. Fortunately one was for stationery and the other only envelope addressing.

Emilia Wickstead’s invitations came up as well, and we opted for something like Olly Paton’s but with both sets of parents, no name written in. A slightly oversized invitation and we did the text and she sorted out the printing. This again was a learning curve – this type of invitation needs to be what it is – uncentred! If it needs to be centred then that is a completely different matter.

The final set of vids on Video Jug was posted – the one on Copperplate being the main one I was after. I was so happy with them. Not to get some full length DVDs done, when? I have no idea.

First week of March ended with a chat with Polly at Brides, Placecards for an upcoming shoot! A long chat with Laura at Atom about some white Small Caps on invitations and envelopes, and sorting out the Vows logo for Chelsea Bidwell. And seeing a friend, Armin, to do a logo for him. We got the sign off on the contributors card for the Matthew Williamson Trunk Show and will get it printed next week in time for the show – that pink is a nightmare to print! Dealing with the beautiful Fong at MW, such a joy.

The second week started the text for Joelle Rashti’s wedding invitations and finalising the design, talking with the die-stampers, letterpress printers and the litho printers about the job. Getting a definite fix on numbers and colours – I am so excite about this job. Joelle’s mother, Ava is an absolute scream! And the fuel for the design is as much Joelle as it is Ava (and her magical cheesecake, and food!). The final bit of the list for the Outset dinner at the V&A arrived. Plate menus blanks arrived from Cutture for Polly’s shoot at Brides. The Placecards were from Hello Lucky and were a dream to write on.

While all of this is going on we had to start working on the copy for the invitations for the Royal Academy’s Summer Event – mock-ups to be done! Not something we normally do as it would entail writing out all the text. I explained this to Bethan but then had a brainstorm!

End of last year, after much deliberation and soul searching (and I should add anguish and tears) I decided to make a font of one of our scripts. For the sole purpose of making something beautiful easy to use, especially for large blocks of text, and for menus and the like. I decided to use the Small Caps we have and worked very hard to originate something that is so subtle and honest. The font it not available on the market, and is only on one computer, but is has given us the flexibility to do many things, and more keep coming up. I must say, I did not envy the font designer, having to deal with me on something that was so much my own. In the end this is what we ended up with.

This then gave us the ability to produce the mock-ups needed for the Royal Academy. Every dark cloud eh? I guess one could never anticipate what life has in store down the road.

James Gillick’s vellum strips were prepared and written on with the text of the specific paintings and let me tell you, wow! Angelo had a chance to play with some of the tiny off cuts of vellum, once I had prepared the whole skin. ‘This is what writing should be about’ was his words when we tried writing on the vellum. Cant wait to sit him down with a quill and some iron gall ink and vellum. I have such a clear memory of what it was like for me.

In 1999 I won a scholarship to go to the University of Reading’s Typography and Graphic Communication’s Department to study letterform history under James Mosely and Michael Harvey. This week saw me going back to demonstrate the history of writing from the Greeks up to the present day, essentially doing what Michael did – it was such an emotional thing for me to do. To give back what they gave to me.

The week ended with me preparing to see a very good friend of mine about some business advice on the direction of the business – Sunday is going to be a tough one. It turned out Sunday was tough but mainly because my good friends Javier and Tony from By Appointment Only Design and I met for one drink the night before. Needless to say this turned into me getting home at an unreasonable hour. In hindsight, I think I really needed the alcohol to deal with what Stephan had in mind for me. What insight to the business he gave me. More on that much, much later on.

Sunday also saw us preparing for Photographer Cat Hepple and Annabel of Love My Dress to come stay with us to spend the Monday with Javier and Tony and the Tuesday in the studio with me and my team. This all began with Alistair coming home from visiting his parents in Derbyshire, on the Sunday and making a Banoffee Pie so it would set for dinner for Monday night!

The girls arrived at Kings Cross and were collected and taken to 38 Chiltern Street for a day at By Appointment Only Design. My day was a little broken up with little bits of jobs and wrapping up early to go collect them, take them home and start cooking. Dinner was for six, Annabel, Cat, Javier, Tony, Ali and myself. We talked shop, poor Ali!

Tuesday say us taking the tube to the studio and me spending time with them explaining how both the stationery and calligraphy businesses work individually and co-operatively. I particularly enjoyed hearing how they both started as well. Kindred spirits. We are all here to help each other! We ended the day with learning how to emboss, boy that was funny, for me! Took them home, then to the train. We were all so tired by the end of the two days but so much richer for it.

Rebecca Wilkins of TCS called about doing Daniel Mark’s invitations for a party. Mixing that deep blue is always tricky, but well worth it. He went for copperplate script to contrast the caps the invitations were printed in.

The weekend saw me spending time with Javier and Tony, up at 530am to head off the Stapleford for a little wedding show. The drive was a hoot and we had a great day out. It also gave me an interesting way to look at the way our colourful stationery works when tied into the stunning flowers produced by the boys!

Our invitation for the Luella’s Boudior Wedding Fair arrived from the beautiful Tiffany Grant-Reily. Sadly I missed it due to work. The week of the 21^st saw me sleep in the studio on the Monday night to play catch-up. The rest of the week was 5 am starts and 10pm home. It was not fun, I am not as young as I used to be became so apparent. I felt like a zombie.

The week ended with some amazing news – Sarah and Michael got a puppy – Daisy and she is so cute! The week also ended to Sarah heading off to Sicily an d we know what that is like. Angelo is off to Paris with Liv for most of the last week so it is just me and Nicola, and the many couriers!

Joelle Rashti’s invitation are done and at the printers, thanks to the wonderful Rachel at Mount Street, and they are magnificent. Easily the most sumptuous invitations I have even designed, and that is on the screen. When they are printed they will be something else. The main invite is die-stamped gold on 700gsm vellum white (a beautiful blush pink) with vintage rose brushed edges. The other two invites are in the vintage rose on a greyish pink board. RSVP card is folded and printed in white on a light dark brown called Nubuck, RSVP envelopes are a lighter brown called Harvest, with the RSVP address printed in the darker Nubuck. Envelopes are the dark Nubuck with white hand lettered calligraphy on them in Spencerian Script!

What a way to end the month.

There is more but I cant show it at the moment!

February 2011–BAOD

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At the beginning of November 2010, Javier and Tony at By Appointment Only Design told me about an event they were planning to hold at One Mayfair. It was to be a show casing evening of work for a wedding event like no other. Three looks, completely laid-out as a table setting with a few plinths around with an invitation or a dress or something amazing. ‘It is going to look like something in a museum!’ he said. Can I come up with an invitation that will be mind blowing!

The first port of call was the Save the Dates. Ideas were tossed around and the sketching began in earnest. I plunged into my Colourplan book with pens at the ready. I tried different looks, scripts, colours and then went on to produce five roughs. One based on a hanging Christmas Bauble as it was being sent the week before Christmas.

All the while the, furious designing of the invitation went apace. ‘Cutture want to have something to do with the invitation!’ And so this was thrown in the mix. We met almost twice a week to see how it was coming along. In the mean time I was also asked to consider invitations for two the three looks, BAOD’s ‘Paris Couture’ look and the wonderful Polly Atkinson from Brides’ ‘Valentine’s’ Theme.

We settled on a ‘circlet of text of the two main names with some kind of corner decoration and a pop-up feel when the card was opened’. I wanted something that seemed alive and moved, but something that also helped the circlet feel like it was rolling. I sent off the images to Javier. He chose the most complex one (number 3) with Anne-Marie (Cutture) and me opting for the simpler of the three (number 1).

Then came the working out of the text and the decoration. The circlet started life as our ‘Upright Copperplate’ and was a serious headache getting it right. Anne-Marie then suggested something in the corners so the flourishing began.

I was not happy. It did not balance well. I knew our Small Caps would fill the centre but could not get my head around then circlet. It was my intention to place all the contributors as a frame at the front and back, blind embossed in our caps, but we could not get all the names together and the printing deadline was upon us.

Still I was unhappy with the lowercase with the flourishing. The Save the Date was done and sent off and Christmas appeared and everything stopped. Well not the designing. On Boxing Day, Javier and Tony dropped by at home and Alistair had to put up with us discussing more designs. That morning I had an idea to do the circlet in interlocked copperplate capitals, I tend to steer clear of copperplate capitals but in this instance it would work. More hassle – have you ever tried writing capitals, in copperplate, on a curve and getting them to look right? Not fun, as the tops of the letters need to be narrower than the bottom. I had to also make sure the letters were large enough to go all the way round and connect up. Then came the hell of the printing.

I knew I wanted it in gold, die-stamped on black Colourplan, with a sunk plate border on the back and front of the card. A mock up of the thing was made, sunk plate and all. All of this whilst working out the dentelle pattern for the corner pieces. This done, I sent of off to Anne-Marie for her to work out the complexity of the laser cutting, because if we don’t make the design correctly, when it is cut, it will fall out! To work this out in my head, I drew the pattern out and shaded in what needed to be cut out. Steep learning curve.

Then came the clincher – Cutture cut the dentelle pattern and there it was in dark grey Colourplan for real. I was thrilled. All the while I was talking with Rachel at Mount Street Printers to work out how we were going to print this. It was too large to be die-stamped in one hit and so two plates needed to be made (10 working days!) printing still to be done.

This was a little bit tricky, I say a little but Rachel would tell you another story. We thought of printing it in 4 hits but the registration would be a nightmare. I cannot tell you how important it was being lead by Rachel on this one.

Wrote the text out, scanned it and sent it to her to print. The plates were made up and off we went.

Javier was also sending out letters to brides who purchased tickets and so a handwritten letter copied up and filled in where the name and number of tickets were needed were done. Envelopes were addressed in the same script.

This was an on going thing as tickets were purchased. We, Javier and I, decided that it would be best to do these on a daily basis, or 10 at a time, which ever came first.

They were printed the BAOD pink or nubuck paper with nubuck envelopes. I must say the pink letter with the nubuck envelopes look stunning.

All the black Colourplan envelopes arrived and I started addressing them in gold ink on the slant. The envelopes were A5. I opted for the slant as I made a crazy decision to do the contributors list on the slant, in interlocked copperplate script.

There were about 300 envelopes to address, all by hand. Came in on the weekend to do these.

I have included some of the roughs for working out who went where, these are the better ones – there were about 20! Fitting this much text in that space, oh well. I knew what I was getting myself into. These were done on a train back from somewhere, I forget. To say the stationery for this event was consuming my life is an understatement. Not to mention there was all the studio work to keep up with. Off it went to print, unfortunately Matthew Williamson came on board after the printing was started.

Invite outers and inners were sent to Cutture to laser cut and stick together. Envelopes were sent and delivered personally to Javier and Tony for stuffing. I turned up at BAOD Shop on the Friday to see the printed contributors list and to help stuff and post. This was the first time I was seeing the finished invitations, contributors list and the envelopes together. I was so excited!

I got to BAOD on Chiltern Street and was practically jumping. Javier thought I had seen one. When he took it out of the box I honestly nearly cried! Of course I then started to pick holes in the and was told to be quite!

Apart from that we also needed a programme for the evening and lots of little place cards with the names of the looks and the contributors to each look. The ‘girandole’ design was done and sent to Mount Street to be litho printed. They arrived on the evening at the show Friday 11^th February at One Mayfair, in time to be put out.

Javier and Tony’s ‘Paris Couture’ look called for pale colours and delicacy. I immediately thought of something I had a toying with – a beautiful lace invitation where the names of the couple were written first and the lace constructed around their names. All in white on a heavy tracing paper duplexed to a 700gsm board with a pale blue frame exposed (it does actually work as an invitation)

Polly’s mood board came and I was stumped! I called Polly as soon as her mood board came in to talk options. Hers came in on a Friday and I really needed the weekend to figure out what to do. In the end I opted for a red background with a heart in the middle made up of the text for the invitation, the couple’s names made the arrow all framed by an embossed border with gold graining in the embossed areas, like heart strings. Polly’s look also came with a beautiful envelope to match with text in copperplate in a beautiful vintage rose dark pink. The place cards were gold gilt with the rose pink and sumptuous menus with a strip of red with speckled gold down the left side.

With both designs I was VERY careful to discuss with all the printers we work with, the scale of complexity, degree of difficulty and duration of printing each project would take. It makes little sense in designing something that cannot be done easily, well and with a budget in mind.

Arriving at the event after a very long day, to see all those petals strewn around, I had to write one more thing – and that was to tell people to ‘Write their details here!’

Below are images Sarah took when they were in place at the venue. I hope you enjoy what enjoyed working on. Thank you Javier, Tony and Polly. Love you lots!

For a better close-up. Oh! And this is what I did to mine – it is lined with GFSmith Gmund Treasury Shimmer.

There were also little gold gild edged placecards with the names of the specific contributors placed next to their contributions!

February 2011

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Where has February gone – I’ll tell you where. Preparing for the Designer Wedding Show as well as the By Appointment Only Design show at One Mayfair.

In the last blog I promised doing a separate blog on what we did for the BAOD show as well as the way in which the stationery for BAOD and One Mayfair was conceived. I was terrified that I would have to do this all on my own but a little bit of help came along in the images of a laser cutting fairy! Helen at Cutture, who did the laser cutting for the dentelle design in the corners of the invitation wanted to write something as well, so I guess we will post them together on both our blogs as a separate thing! Helen’s should be out soon at

www.cutture.com

February started with us deciding that NO WORK would be taken on in the week of the Designer Wedding Show, needless to say there were last minute things which came in which needed dealing with.

Olly and Mark called up to get a handwritten invitation designed for their wedding stationery, we are in the tail end of that. Also had the stunning Ava, friends of Javier and Tony at BAOD, let her daughter loose on us. What we have come up with has stunned even me. More of that, once they are done it would mean we would have included some letterpress work with our expanding stationery ranges. Currently working with the amazingly talented Phil at Hand& Eye Press

www.handandeye.co.uk

This week in February also saw us working on our first printed seating plan! As a rule we do not do seating plans due to the changing nature of the thing but have found a way to hand write all the calligraphy and scan it in and move it around from there – this gives us the flexibility of changing the names if there are last minute additions, omissions and general changes. Our new A3 printer is a blessing – still coming to terms with that. As you can see from the image the text is written out in our beautiful Small Caps (for clarity), titles are in one of our other scripts – colour is black on light paper – in this case cream Colourplan. There were also some table names – where one of the names was so long it had to be done at a different size to the rest of the cards!

The wedding show week saw us at Browns’ Bride, writing on the mirrors for Mark Niemierko’s fabulous start to Wedding Show Season, vids to be posted! Mark was in his element and did a great job of showcasing his skill as one of the best! Andreas from The Mandarin Oriental was there and we had a great chat about Placecards! Sarah and I were taken by lovely Caroline Burstein! We are starting a fan club! And the evening got better – up came Annabel from Love My Dress Blog. So many people so little time! Sarah and I left at 9pm. Much to do the next day. Peggy was there in here glory as well – always looking glamorous!

www.brownsbride.com www.niemierko.com www.peggyporschen.com

www.lovemydress.net/blog www.mandarinoriental.com

Prep for the DWS also saw me working on some of the boards for Javier and Tony at BAOD’s stand, not to mention the tweeting on the nightmare of doing an interlatticed grid for one of the menus for BAOD tables. Alistair was, yet again, invaluable but did comment that I seemed to be doing more work for other people’s stands, than I was for my own. Cutture also asked if they could get some work done – and as we were all working feverishly to get the BAOD Show on the Friday evening ready, one more thing was, well, one more thing.

BAOD asked for 2 sets of place cards and menus – a plum set with gold and a green and white set for their Lilly of the Valley look. Cutture also needed some calligraphy for their stand. Two handwritten menus and a handwritten table plan in white ink on a gold speckled paper – argh!

Set-up started with getting there, and this year, instead of packing everything into the car and squeezing in and driving there with Alistair, I felt that we deserved getting the courier company we use, The Keen Group, to send a man with a van! What joy! And once again Alistair came to help with the set-up. It was great that much of the prep work of putting things unto boards which then needed Velcro was done the day before by Nicola and Angelo. I cannot believe the first year we did this we stuck the invitations unto the panels individually! Can you believe?

We created many new and exciting things for this year’s DWS. Again getting our new fan-dangle studio printer to play workhorse we are now about to print small jobs in-house. This saves on time in sending our calligraphy to one of our printers, but it also means we can turn around things quickly. We did was some menus on different coloured papers and finished them in different ways – sunk or raised plate, brushed edges in colour or gold/silver, a line as a border in colour or gold/silver. I was thrilled to leave this up to Nicola and Angelo to decide on colour choices and Nicola’s eye for design and colour on the finishing effects.

And of course, Sarah was adamant that we should do a sample ‘Certificate of Marriage’, not having the time to concoct one Sarah used her marriage as the sample text!

Invitation wise I did a delicate copperplate in white on the slant, on thick translucent paper with a baby blue border. Wondering what it would look like in white on dark grey. There were a few trials to get this working, both with the background colour and the end colours. The transclear paper tended to reflect what was next to it and something too pale made the reading a little tricky.

I have been studying on an Arabic decoration course and felt that something Arab-based would also be good to do and decided something oversized and based on Koranic ‘Zar Afshan’ gold borders with English text in my own version of an Arabic looking script with a lapis blue medallion with the initials of the couple inside would work. This was also the inspiration for the Menus with the gold on red.

As we were toying with colour on, I decided to play with the heavy translucent paper again but with my interlocked latticework and 18^th century border.

At the show Sarah went around with the camera taking images of some of the work we did. The practical aspects of the DWS was a whole other matter. This year left me feeling confident enough to leave Sarah, Nicola and Angelo on their own for half day on the Friday and on the Saturday. I had agreed with Louis Vuitton to go to the Westfield branch to write out Valentine’s Day cards for their customers – there staff there were all so lovely. Daniel at Selfridges, asked me to do the same thing on the Saturday afternoon. Really interesting days out but too tiring to the two shows as well.

So the weekend went like this – DWS at 8am to sort out some lighting and last minute tidy up, show opened, talked with the public, write names, said good bye to Sarah and Nicola at noon, took a taxi to Louis Vuitton, set-up, wrote cards till 5pm, got another taxi, with all my stuff to One Mayfair for the BAOD Show, left there, home at 11pm. Saturday saw essentially the same thing, with the exception of having to move boards around on the stand as the work from the BAOD show was now present at DWS. I left Sarah and Nicola at DWS at 1pm to head to Selfridges, set-up, chat and make cards for public (got an earful from a woman who did not see why she should give her boyfriend a beautiful Paul Antonio card, since he ALWAYS forgets Valentine’s Day, and her birthday) met some great people, left at 6pm headed home. Sunday saw Alistair dropping me to DSW for a full day.

I met some lovely people at DWS, my good friends at The Food Show, BAOD, Cutture, Brides Magazine, Hello Lucky, The Wren Press, Ackergill Tower, The Langham & Sugar Lily. I also had the good fortune to meet the stunning Fong at Matthew Willaimson, Annie at Scattercake, and some great event planners who visited the show.

The week after the show saw us working on a job for Sophie at Ruth Kaye Design – one of the quick scripts on a reflective plastic. We had a sample to play with two weeks previous but getting the final thing is a whole other matter. I swear I was nearly blinded writing those – the photos were very difficult to talk. Almost as difficult as trying not to get finger prints all over the work.

This week also saw us contacting all the people who expressed interest at the DWS. She did a brilliant job of working out a pricing structure for our calligraphy when printed using different print processes. Invaluable at the show and proving even more important now that we are back in studio. Funny thing is, because what we do is bespoke, the prices change ever so slightly with each job as the calligraphy also needs to be paid for. The lovely Alyson Hurst came to the studio to discuss printing and the creation of out soon to be realised pads of A4 paper (a collaborative effort with PAScribe and GFSmith). Nic, travel writer for Grazia and a very good friend, dropped by to talk about some web site stuff! And Catherine Rice, formally of Jo Malone, came by for a catch up. It was GREAT seeing her. (It is funny how we miss people when the move jobs, but the reappear in our lives to bring job later on!)

The last week of February saw me trying to find a date to do some filming in the studio on what might be needed for a royal wedding! A call from beautiful Rebecca at TCS about an upcoming project. Finishing up a job for Chantal, Yana and Candida at Outset in conjunction with the lovely Siobhan at the Design Council. I had to work the last weekend to get Elise’s job for Burberry ready (was happy to do so, because she is easy to work with). Got a call from Julie at Bovingdons,

The end of February saw the arrival of a skin of manuscript vellum for a job! I excited! I LOVE vellum and opening this roll was only done once everyone was out of the studio. I unfurled it and placed it in a drawer in the A0 plan chest to flatten out. The client said he is in a hurry, but vellum cannot be rushed. Preparation of the skin for copperplate script will start next week. Have to make up a batch of Iron Gall Ink as well. OH! OH! And cut some quills too. Fun, fun, fun! So excited.

I thought we had a slow month, work wise but typing this made me realise that it was anything but slow, certainly not calm!

January 2011

2011-02-06T06:34:00.001-08:00

Where has the month gone? I had such good intentions to write and update the blog weekly and a whole month has gone now and not one week was put on. I decided that it would be for the month but it is already the beginning of the second week in February! So you will have to forgive the long posting.

The month began quietly, and getting over 3 weeks of the flu.

We started off with a small job for an existing client who needed some text written on a textured frame.

Not a difficult job but having not done any calligraphy for absolute weeks, my hand was not in it – in the end I had to rewrite it, on a trial sheet about 6 times to get the centring correct and the letters even and looking like I did them.

Sarah’s arm is still in pain but getting better, and she is off to Sicily soon.

The Monday saw us ordering stocks of placecards, placement envelopes and escort cards. 500 of each in white and oyster – in anticipation for requests. It is a large outlay but well worth it when last minute work comes in.

By Appointment Only Design’s letters arrived for us to place names and text on the for the event on the 11th of Feb. I will have to do a special blog on the stationery we prepared for this event. But here is the ‘Save The Date’ and the ‘List of Contributors’

You’ll need to click on the white on black one to see it better. Completed the design for the event and sent it off to print. It is on colourplan ebony by GFSmith, printed by Rachel at Mount Street Printers and laser cutting by Cutture. What a process. Started working on the stationery to be used in the show itself! More on that in another blog.

The week also saw Ali and I heading off to the new Cirque de Soleil at the Albert Hall. Working on a big design job but have little hopes for it as the client is not playing by the rules: have spoken with the bookbinder, the metal cutters, a box maker and a velvet manufacturer to get quotes but without knowing what we need to do exactly, and a budget, it is proving stressful, also found some more grey hairs in my beard! Must be this big job.

Saturday the 6th saw me giving a lecture to the Lingfield Scribes and seeing my good friend Sue again. She always warms my heart. This is me waffling on about how I got to where I am now and some of the work we do in studio. I had a great day out and met some wonderful people.

The 10th saw work starting to pour in, thankfully. We, and I say we not I, as I am now referring the all of us who work at PaulAntonioScribe, have not had that much work on and even though I know the work will come in, this month has been really stressful, with tax to pay coming due and the idiots at the tax office not giving a damn. I just don’t understand how they can make demands on people paying taxes and then not answer the phone and when you do get through to them they have no idea what they are talking about – what are they getting paid for? I’ll stop my rant there. Thankfully our accounts at BKL know what they are doing and can offer sound advice.

So the work has started – we have a job to do for Linda Cooper. Linda always knows what she wants so there is no run-a-round, the work comes in, the list is sorted as we need it and it gets done, proofread, and sent on, additions are kept to a minimum and then only sent in one go. She subsequently told me the client loved the work. That is always good to know! This week also say us writing some names in beautiful Smythson Books for Christine and Simon at the Berkeley. There was also a small job, done by a calligrapher in the USA which needed USA added on every envelope. The bride said it would have been good if the calligrapher had realised she was posting them from the UK. I was quick to point out that it was really her responsibility to send a correct list.

I make it a point to let clients know it is not our job to correct their list because once we start correcting the things we do know, when we miss something we get it in the neck – your list is your responsibility. It sounds harsh, but once you do it once, that is it! Everyone then hears you will do it, how? I just don’t know.

The 18th to the 24th saw us having to cope without Sarah! BooHoo!but we managed, just. I had to do some invoices myself. Can you believe that? Like I even know where to look anymore! I managed in the end. 300 placecards, placement envelopes and escort cards to do for a private client and, AND the VideoJug vids I made last year were launched at the VideoJug website

www.videojug.com/search?keywords=paul+antonio

I only found out as emails started coming in. Promised to get the originals to send to Linda at The Manuscript Pen Company, Paul at Windsor & Newton and Alyson at GFSmith for all the tools and materials they sent for the vids. We watched some of them in studio and had a giggle.

And the jobs keep coming in. We had some work to do for Gee Brothers, Mount Street and something from Smythson as well – all that lovely blue!

A poem job came in which needed to be in an A4 frame so did not want to chance Title Case letters and opted for something I did before Christmas.

This combination of a large decorative cap or word, or in this case the first line of the text, coupled with our small caps works really well when a small piece of paper is needed.

I sent this to another client who promptly requested his be done like this but on an A5 sheet of paper. I had to tell him ‘no’ as he had much more text than I could fit and writing these caps at 1mm is not fun. It seems the more you offer the more people want.

Another 300 placecards, placement envelopes and escort cards job came in, but on white! Thankfully we bought all that stock last week. This time for an event for Catherine at Burberry. Alas, Louise left Burberry in December, and after building that wonderful client relationship with her, I was gutted, and a little apprehensive, but Catherine is as lovely as Louise so almost no change there.

A job we have been working for Gerri at Love&Lord has finally come in. More and more we are getting asked to do all the stationery from the Save the Dates and addressing them, to the invitations (with RSVP Cards, additional party invitations) and addressing the envelopes. The invites and envelopes arrived and the looked stunning. I managed to convince the client white die stamped on colour plan tabriz blue would be magical. What I did not anticipate was how magical! I cant post the work as the wedding is what not yet happened but will show you something which approximates it. This is an envelope yet to be sent off to the gifted Erin! You must visit her blog at -

www.luckyluxecouturecorrespondence.blogspot.com

Actually I can give you a peak – as you cant read any of the text

Working with GFSmith’s Tabriz Blue is a joy, but matching it colour is a nightmare, unless one is using Windsor & Newton gouache for the mix. So here is the mixing and the sample. I also used the Titanium White for opacity and their gum arabic to improve binding. I had a also add some Ox Gall to improve flow – it was a real test but produced a stunning result in the end. Paul at Windsor & Newton also suggested using some Copic White – can’t want to get that!

And of course, January is the BAFTAs. We work with the BAFTAs and Asprey on the nominees party and once again Deena and Loren were sending emails of impending invitations. It really does put a smile on my face dealing with people I have worked with over a period of time.

I had a request to allow a film crew to come film and talk with me about working on the invitations. They wanted to film me writing Colin Firth’s name, and I must confess to feeling a little overwhelmed, especially after seeing ‘The King’s Speech’.

And that was essentially January 2011, of course with the St James’s Partnership dinner thrown in and all the work for the event an One Mayfair see the below links

www.byappointmentonlydesign.com

www.onemayfair.com/event-entry.php?id=31

I will do a special blog on what is being done for the show, but do remember the 11th to the 13th is The Designer Wedding Show at Battersea Park, and boy do we have some stuff planned for that.

www.designerweddingshow.co.uk/future-events.html

Dec 20th–31st

2010-12-29T06:22:00.001-08:00

I am really looking forward to the break!

Monday saw us winding down but a bit of a stressful book from Helen at Walton Street Stationery Company. A beautiful big book arrived! the client wanted copperplate on the front as a message and inside the book our little slanted caps. The book was a Thames & Hudson book. Ah the joys of coated paper. After explaining to Helen only a biro/ball point pen will work on this lovely slick paper she called the client and got him to agree to the job.

Funny, now that I see the photo of the work and the high gloss on the paper, I cant believe I even said yes to this. But Helen is great and I will do anything to help her out!

Tuesday and Wednesday saw me flat on my back with flu. Had to be in on Thursday to finish Britta’s invitations and get them off to her that evening. Really felt like Death Warmed over! Not pleasant working with one is so ill.

Thursday saw me finalising the Save The Date for the Big Event with Javier and Tony at By Appointment Only Design and Brides Magazine and One Mayfair. It will be held on the 11th from 630pm. I sent them a few variations on the Save the Dates but in the end they went with this one

I spent some time on Thursday talking with Anne-Marie at Cutture about the complex design for the invitations – now that is going to be fun.

Shut the studio from the 24th! yeah! But that does not mean nothing will be done till the new year.

Apart from getting over the flu and suffering from 2 migraine attacks, I spent sometime working on new invitation designs for the up coming shows.

Today is the 29th and I came in to find some invoices (have to return some things) but decided to play with my freshly made ruling pens. It is great being in here and not working. Not going to stay long though because that will definitely mean I will end up working. Hope you enjoy them. And have a great New Year!

Dec 13th - 17th

2010-12-29T05:42:00.001-08:00

The run up to Christmas is not fun. So many last minute requests.

I forgot to post the images of the books for Benefit Cosmetics – problem with books is they need so much space to dry.

And of course the St James’s Place menus. I have been doing this job every year for the last 10 years now. When they start arriving I know it is the end of the year! The event is in January so it is guaranteed work in a slow month.

What am I saying, January is not slow, it is run up to the Designer Wedding Show, and a Wedding Fayre at Dartmoor House, 37 Charles Street, London W1J 5ED – drop by for a chat and some calligraphy! 11am till 4 pm.

This week also saw some more place cards being sent off to the Mandarin Oriental. it is great that Angelo is so good at proof reading as well!

Here he is checking the spelling. As he is also training as a scribe he will sometimes tell us off for shoddy lettering.

Precision is not only in the spelling .

Javier and Tony at By Appointment Only Design asked me to do some signs for their shop and seeing them this evening, Monday, so did them and set them out to dry!

I did some signs for them before and they are always commented on in the shop. Also, it is fun that they let me do what I want so I can get to play with different designs, colours and the like.

They needed a little sign for Peggy Porschen’s Cakes in the shop as well but it is really the capturing of their flowers that makes me want to try something floral in the lettering.

We have an interesting job I have been asked to come up with a complex design for so I have been doing research – I LOVE my library!

Unfortunately I can’t discuss the job, not only because it is the beginning stages but we don’t have it yet, and as Trinidadians say ‘I would not like to put goat mouth’ on it!

Antonia Voss’ job arrived all well and good to – she is so great to deal with. Work on time, if not cost goes up and it is paid post haste. Of course our first call on a job leaving us in peals of laughter. She is just great! Copperplate on the invitations and envelopes too.

Thursday saw us wrapping up a Certificate of Marriage for Mark Niemierko. I decided to use a sunk plate border for this one and not a drawn line.

It really is something special these certificates and I do have fun doing them.

We ended the week with a small job for Dior which was done in a one day turn around. It is great that our clients know we can turn around work so quickly. More importantly, that they know it costs more and are willing to pay for that service. And to think I was so against it!

The last thing to leave the studio was a poem for a client. Something that needed to small enough to fit an A4 frame but both legible and handwritten as well and having both a masculine and feminine feel! I know!

I opted for our Small Caps as they are clear and masculine, with large Copperplate Drop Caps for the decorative, feminine element.

I had a little bit of fun with this and the client loved it.

My sister, Charissa, is 30 tomorrow! I did not send a card :-( but will send her something stunning in the new year.

Dec 6th - 9th

2010-12-17T09:29:00.001-08:00

6^th – 9^th

Monday saw me in at 730am to start working on the Placecards, in table order, for the British Fashion Awards. There were Placecards to be done for The Mandarin Oriental for Kate. A stack of their cards arrived so we would have them for future jobs. 4000 letters to have signatures on them also arrived, late! So I set Keiko and Nicola up to assist with the 450 placecards while I went off and drew a table dressed for a wedding, to be reproduced at the bottom of a menu which we wrote out – all printed by Mount Street (thanks Rachel)

We set Angelo up to start signing the 4000 letters whilst the rest of us got on with the 450 placecards. Booked a courier to send off the illustration and the menu to Mount Street.

NOT FUN. Not happy! In the mean time we got a call from Jazz and Mansi at Benefit Cosmetics to write names on the cover of some Rob Ryan Note Books. But I must confess that there was no way to concentrate as getting these menus done for tomorrow 4pm was foremost in my mind, not to mention having to be at the British Fashion Awards for 4pm!

Nicola, Keiko and Angelo left. I called Alistair to say I was not going to be home early. I set up the menus to be written and got stuck in. I took a break at 930 for a cup for coffee (we have a great machine in the studio) and thought I should look in the box sent by the Manuscript Pen Company for the VideoJug filming on Thursday. I nearly fell over! So much stuff, so many toys. Christmas is here. 945 started back on the menus Left the studio at l1140pm. I got home at midnight, ate and went to sleep

445 alarm! I felt like I literally closed my eyes. In studio at 545am! And started again on the menus. Dont know how I am going to get through the day and the BFCAwards in the evening. 930am and the door rang. I thought ‘I really am not in the mood to see a courier.’ It was the colour and brushes from Windsor & Newton. What a joy, and really needed a smile. Back to the menus. This really feels like punishment! Nicola arrived at 945 and started on the menus. I continued while juggling additional names coming in for the Awards in the evening. Another event to do for the Mandarin Oriental, will have to wait till tomorrow!

1030 Alyson Hurst arrives with the paper from GFSmith for the shoot on Thursday, it really does feel like Christmas all my top suppliers pulling together to make something wondrous happen. Back to the menus! Spoke with Annika about the work. Nicola had to do the Placecards as the names arrived too late for me.

Left the studio at 3 to head into central London to get bits. Went to London Graphic Centre to get an A2 Light Table as we were one short, for the 4000 letters (which are still being signed buy Angelo, Keiko and Nicola. Off to Rymans to get some more blue and black pens (for out quick scripts) and then off to the Savoy to tie up the job for the BFC. Good gig! Some lovely people but did not see Sophie. Got home at 9pm – dead!

In at 8am. No electricity! Great. I can’t even make a coffee and I cant leave the studio as there are tonnes of candles lit. . Lost 1.5 hours of work. I sat in the dim candle light thinking. Electricity back on at 930Nicola and Angelo arrive at 945 and they start on the letters again. Polly’s job went off. The 2^nd Mandarin oriental Job went off. The letters were completed and send off to the client. I look like crap and have to be filmed tomorrow. Completed a little rush job for Jo Malone.

I asked Coral (the site administrator) to ask the very noisy people next door to keep it down for the filming and set to cleaning up the studio. I did not finish until 1030pm. Moving books throwing out things, unnecessary stationery left over from jobs. Duds went into the shredding box carpet vacuumed and laid out all the tools and materials for the starting shot.

Dinner was ready, thank God for Alistair. Suet Dumplings in a Pork Casserole. I am telling you about food because when I am this tired food is a necessity. There was also a soft cheese cake with crumb crust! Ate, trimmed my beard and shaved in prep for tomorrow.

Thursday saw me in at 730am prepping for the shoot. Did some last minute prepping. Told all clients couriers had to arrive before 10 or after 4. And the door bell rang at 9! In came Charlie and Sunaina. Made coffee, chatted, got some perspective on the shoot and jumped in. Got some direction on how to sit to half face the camera, how to start and how to end off. 20 videos! I feel like death warmed over – not to mention the week. Thank goodness for all the wonderful Jo Malone moisturiser from Jess at Jo Malone, ah Pomegranate Noir (bath oil, cologne, shower gel, moisturiser). We started shooting at 1015am and finished at 430pm! I stayed back to complete another job for the Mandarin Oriental. They are so lovely to deal with, Kate and Emily.

Sorry about the fuzzy pic.

Friday, got in at 930am organised all the work that needed to go out. Worked on the Awards for the TCS Staff and left it alone to dry. Looked in the box of books for Benefit Cosmetics and pulled them out. ARGH! All the books were in packets of 10 or so and then all individually wrapped in plastic film. So had to do all of that before dealing with the writing. Copperplate on the covers – Windsor & Newton Lamp Black Gouache with a bucket load of their Gum Arabic! Works like a charm on slightly coated paper. Thank goodness it was not textured too. There were some issues with the nib going over the printed dots as these were raised, but in the end they looked good. But the space they needed to dry! Look at that will you!

Britta’s job turned up, all her envelopes were done – white W&N gouache on Colourplan Dark Grey in our Kensington Script. Stunning! Unfortunately the invitations weren’t reversed out so they went back to be redone.

Jess Carder’s menus turned up and we were about to send her the hearts with names on them(they too needed tonnes of space to dry), her escort cards and placement envelopes. I am so happy for Jess! Left at 430 – I have a 5:00 massage booked – so desperately need it. James was a treat. Lovely soft, medium sized hands but very firm. I fell asleep a few times during the massage. Left him with a little name card I did for him and headed off to the INK Exhibition Closing Party at UCl for respondents and participants! I will miss Rhainnan and Subadrah! Also say Gilly at the party what a scream, shame Stephen was missing. Also saw Nick the Letterpress Printer and, get this, Type Caster! Can you believe. Headed home and cooked dinner.

Saturday saw us going to the Brook Street Jo Malone Shop to sample fragrances! Yeah! And then I went off to By Appointment Only Design to see Javier and Tony for a chat about the up coming show on the evening of the 11^th of February 2011. See you there?

Quick reminder. There is a Wedding Fayre at Dartmoor House, 37 Charles Street, London W1J 5ED – drop by for a chat and some calligraphy! 11am till 4 pm.

PS – there are vids of the studio – long ones, and vids from the Hieroglyphs class which I will also post soon.

Dec 4th & 5th

2010-12-17T09:14:00.001-08:00

Decided to do Saturday and Sunday as a separate entry to show, more to myself than anyone else, that these two days should really be a days out of the week.

Saturday saw me up bright and early to get all my stuff together to take to the British Museum to teach the workshop on Cursive Hieroglyphs. There were about 20 attendees from people who had no experience of Egyptian hieroglyphs to lecturers and PhD students in Egyptology. I got there early enough to set up, get copies, Cut lignin paper and stick it up on the wall and put my tools out. I had the chance to chat with attendees whilst setting up so that gave me a good reference point.

The class was really engaging and provided a lot of information on issues that participants had with writing the script, from using a pencil for monoline structures to moving unto double pencils in preparation for using a square cut reed. We mixed up some gouache for practise as they were all intended to produce a few columns of book of the dead on papyrus.

After setting up everyone to get on with their sheets, I sat down to do my own piece of the Book of the Dead using a rush cut much smaller than the reeds the class were working with.

I was so tired at the end of the class but everyone took the time to come up to say thanks and how much they enjoyed it. And of course the obligatory ‘when is the book going to be out’ was asked! If only time would allow.

Sunday saw me coming into the studio at noon to work till 7pm. Sophie’s seating cards for the British Fashion Council arrived all well and good on Friday and as all the names need to be in the same hand as they were all being put out on one table it was left to me to do them. It took 8 hours to do them all. Left them, with their list in alphabetical order, on the, now lower, proof reading table for Angelo to check on Monday. Printed off the list in table order and left it ready for us to work on tomorrow. I decided to split the list up with Keiko, Nicola and myself. That way we could all get them ready by the end of the day.

Sunday also saw me prepping for the week as Sarah would not be in. There was about 6 jobs coming in. Lists had arrived but of course, it is better to wait till the stationery is actually in studio to merge list and print them off as additions are always something to consider.

I spent some time tidying up the studio in anticipation for the filming with VideoJug, on Thursday.

Nov 29th–Dec 3rd

2010-12-17T08:55:00.001-08:00

And the week has changed from 5 days to 7. I will deal with Saturday and Sunday in a separate blog! As we get deeper in the Christmas season this is what happens. Work that is booked starts coming in whilst lots of last minute work start creeping in.

A few months ago I had a talk with Tom Freud of Atom Events concerning business practise. We have worked with Tom for almost 5 years and I thought ‘who better to ask advice on practise?’ We went for a drink and that resulted in me coming up with our job scaling scheme whereby we work to a 4 day turnaround. 3 days is 25% more, 2 days is 50% next day is double. Weekend is triple! But it also meant that we implemented a £50 minimum fee regardless of job. I must confess I did feel bad having to do something like this but business is business and there are bills to pay.

The day I rewrote or Price List Info Sheet to reflect this we applied it to a few jobs and the clients were a little shocked but completely understood, as they wanted the work urgently. Just goes to show that Artisans should not underestimate business practise. Dont get me wrong, it takes a lot out of us to conceptualise this, and then we have to come to terms with it, and then implement it. But I digress.

Anyway, the week started off with a stupid tube strike so I shut the studio as the hassle is simply not worth it. Besides there was enough writing that needs done so working on the website from home as well and catching up on correspondence proved useful.

Tuesday early start and snow! And you know what snow means – cold! Got in at 730 and hoped straight in to writing. This week saw us signing 1500 Christmas cards for a client. Angelo, Keiko, Nicola and myself all worked on them as they we aim for our turnaround time of 4 working day. This is more tedious than time consuming. What clients fail to understand is mistakes will happen, ink will not work on the card but also repetition causes the brain to skip. Needless to say we got them done.

I had to come off the job as the work from Steffi Beeck from Specific Media came in – guess what – I had to be one of Santa’s Elves – can you imagine? I had to handwrite 10 letters. The thing I dislike most about handwriting large blocks of text is the with every word you write the possibility of an error increases and once you mess that up, well you just have to start over. I managed to get them to opt for Colourplan Cream over Pergamenata. I like Pergamaenata a lot, it had the perfect colour and look for the job but once it was folded it, the score was rigid and cracked. I used Windsor and Newton Lamp black and a Manuscript Pen Company Round hand 4 nib.

Wednesday saw more snow. Someone emailed me to ask how I start the day so this is what happens – if there is staff the day before, I come in, at about 730/8 – we are not open for business until 10 though as I usually leave at 6 or 7, sometimes 8 or 9, or 10 depending on what is on. So I come in and switch the coffee machine on, pack away the dishes and cups which have been washed up and then make my coffee. Sit at the computer and check emails, as we get emails in the night! Reply to what I need to reply too and leave what Sarah or Angelo have to deal with. Check Facebook and my other profiles and if there is time reply. But which time I have finished my coffee. I get a pint of water, drink half of it, go wash my hands and head down stairs. Once I have mixed up gouache and get the jobs I am working on set up on various desks I finish my pint of water, head upstairs, check email, get another pint of water and scrub my hands. This gets done every hour or so. Needless to say my the skin on my hands are dry. I moisturise at night but that much washing is hard on them, but it beats dirty work!

Wednesday saw a job for some Placecards for Friday, from Louise Jackson at Burberry. We have started stocking white and cream Placecards, Placement Envelopes and Escort Cards. Louise is great to deal with. She is always pleasant and funny, and then she said she was leaving. I was saddened by this. It is always great for people to move on they take us with them but it is always sad to know that you need to develop a new relationship, it is hard work! But we are here to help.

Rebecca at The Communication Store also called, needing names on invitations and envelopes. I had a brief chat with her and we decided to do the Placecards at the same time as well as next week is already booked solid.

Thursday saw my working frantically on finalising my course materials for my workshop at the British Museum in conjunction with the Book of the Dead Exhibition – more of this on Saturday!

We also got a call from the lovely Polly at Brides Magazine for some name son the backside of some envelopes for a shoot – odd, but brilliant concept! Envelopes are on its way. It also saw the agreement by the British Fashion Council, thanks to Sophie at Honest, to get 450 placecards and 450 seating cards (Placecards with a table number at the back) done! The are due in tomorrow and needed on Monday end of play! You know what that means – yep working on Sunday! Sarah and I left work at 5 to get to Peggy Porschen’s New Shop opening and Christmas party!

We arrived at Peggy’s and who greets us but none other than Polly! The envelopes did not arrive – how we laughed. I did come in on Friday to find them there though. The party was great. Peggy is a goddess! Apart from always looking beautiful and elegant, would love to see her baking with flour everywhere but somehow I don’t think she would look like that. The food was AMAZING. The little Christmas Puddings, miniature mince pies, cookies, lethal! I could not stop stuffing my face! And cosmopolitans – those were very very bad!

My wonderful friends Javier and Tony from By Appointment Only Design produced some stunning (no surprise there) arrangements for the shop and a table boa of flowers which was magical. I was so happy when they turned up. It is great when professional practise turns into supportive friendships – those boys are great and I am so thrilled they are in my life.

Friday saw me at a Palaeography Conference on Illuminated Manuscripts in the Digital age. I try to do a little bit of academic work very now and again, or the practical will burn me out. Saw Michelle Brown (got grilled about my studies), Chris de Hamel, Pamela Robinson – always fun but had to leave early to go to the British Museum to drop off my exemplars for tomorrow for copies.

Sarah fell today. I was nearly in tears when I read the message. She was heading out of home and slipped on some ice and serious injured her arm. The text was sent from hospital. I felt stick to my stomach.

I left the conference and headed to the studio. Polly’s cards are stilling there bright gold and all! Angelo finished proof reading the TCS stationery and got Rebecca to send a courier for them. Louise had to cancel her job because the attendees could not fly in due to bad weather. We sent the cards on anyway! Annika at TCS called to say her menus were a definite go ahead. She sent a sample of what the paper would be like. The paper was so thick, I double checked with here that is was going to be thin enough (350gsm) to be printed on and she said yes. Looking forward to that job on Monday.

I left early to take all the stuff I need for the workshop at the British Museum home so I did not have to go back and forth. Ali was still working hard when I got home, so popped in an episode of Supernatural, am trying to finish season 4, when he was ready we headed out to Su-Fang’s, from the Royal Academy, leaving party. Andrew, Debbie... everyone was there! It was a great occasion even if for a sad reason. We did not stay late as I needed to get some sleep from the night before and needing to be ready to teach Cursive Hieroglyphs! Am a little nervous but so excited too

November 22nd–26th

2010-12-17T08:44:00.001-08:00

Looks like not that much happened this week

Nicola came into the studio to work on the Monday.

Tuesday saw Angelo and I doing some moving to give him a a drawing table we use for proof reading. I feel this will make it seem more like he is working like a scribe! It seemed to work in that he felt it made a difference.

Last week I called Aylson at GFSmith to ask if we could get some light coloured Colourplan samples in A5. They arrived today – so excited to play with them but funnily enough it seems even though things are a little quite I still cant find the time to get to the box.

CAT HAMMOND! Yeah! I have not spoken with Cat in ages and now comes a job from her and I have to talk with her about the stock and delivery dates. It is always great when someone you like crops up in life.

Thursday saw me once again at the INK Exhibition at UCL but this time I am demonstrating Formal Calligraphy which contrasts starkly with the modern and free form lettering I did two weeks ago. I decided to cut quills to show attendees and demonstrate writing out some Textualis Quadrata most commonly referred to as ‘gothic’. I took some vellum and papyrus for people to see but it was principally about how ink works. My good friend, Stephen Quirke form the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology came by to see me demonstrating. I also met .... who practises Farsi Calligraphy. We had a great chat about ink and reeds and paper.

It turned out to be quite an interesting day with Marigold from the palaeography department at UCL, coming by to say hello and chat about writing. It was freezing though and am glad for the warmth and friendship of Rhiannan and Subadrah! We had a great time talking shop.

There are some videos to post as well. One on the actual writing and one on quill cutting. Will get those posted and let you know where.

Friday came and went without event! Sarah not in but half way through the afternoon Gerri Sweetland turned up looking radiant. We talked shop as there are a few up coming jobs to design and follow up the printing of but also to deal with the calligraphy on.

I gave her a tonne of samples to take with her.

Sunday

Nov 15–21 Sarah’s Back!

2010-12-02T06:21:00.001-08:00

First, let me apologise for this post being so late – the Christmas Rush is upon us. Not to mention reading bits about blogging and it says not to write more than 500 words as it is difficult to keep people’s attention – so if you feel the long blogs are great let me know if not will happily cut it down!

So Sarah got back! yeah! I miss her so much when she is gone. Not to mention the fact that I get only half of my work done when she is not here and I have to talk with clients, which, believe you me, they seem to dislike more than I do! But really, looking forward to having her having her back in studio.

The week started off with invoices to chase. Why is it you do work for clients quickly and have to turn around and beg them to pay. I did threaten one client that I would write a blog about the hell we have had with them and name them and the outstanding invoices and all the work we did. Needless to say, once that was suggested they paid pretty quickly.

We started the week with a small, last minute job for The Spectator. Did that, had it proof read and send back quickly and then it was on to planning for the week.

I spend Monday afternoon prepping for a 3 hour Lecture-Demo I give, usually to university students, on the history of the alphabet from 500BC to the present. Had a meeting with the BRILLAINT Alyson Hurst at GFSmith and some of the colleagues. I love those guys so much!

Tuesday morning saw me heading off to Birmingham to Birmingham City University to teach so this Demo-Lec. left home at 7am and was in BrummyLand 9. Got a coffee with Colette Jeffrey (Graphic Design Lecturer) and set up. It took about 30 minutes to set up which was good as it was being recorded. So once that is available will post it. The talk went well, was dead tired and had to rush back to London after. Fortunately Sarah was in studio dealing with all that need to be done, and so were Angelo and Nicola.

Wednesday saw me frustrated with the tubes again – it just seems to work wrong when you leave home to get in early. Spoke with Claire at GSP! So lovely to deal with! Steffi at Specific Media also called about writing some of Santa’s Letters – right, me, and elf! Great! Completed the Jo Malone Job for the beautiful Jess and had the surprise of the week – my Tabriz Roll arrived. The buzzer rang and I opened the door and there was Alyson Hurst with the roll, I nearly fell over

Of course I had to play with the colour! Folded this up and posted it to Yves (see below for the envelope it went it, i.e. last week)

Thursday saw me being filmed in the studio by a crew from the British Museum. The little clip was on writing Egyptian hieroglyphs – the cursive form used in the Book of the Dead. This will be posted later too!

Friday saw Angelo and I doing some more moving and fixing of the studio. So up went the shelves on the stairwell. This will give you an idea of the books in studio.

And here are only the books on manuscripts, palaeography, 16th – 19th century scripts and catalogues of manuscripts on sale at Sothebys, Christies and Maggs Bros. I did this for ease of access for research. And this is what the stairway looked like in the end

I had to clean the carpet too!

Came in on the weekend as Alistair was in Derbyshire – and went crazy tidying up the myriad of pens in the studio as well. A few weeks ago, Ali picked up 4 CD Racks and this is what I did with one of them.

There was other work on as well but the tidying up of the studio was what really made my week!

Short Week

2010-11-08T15:00:00.001-08:00

We had a short week imposed on us by the lovely people at London Underground. They were striking from Tuesday evening till Wednesday evening. The last time this happened, last month, it took me almost 2 hours to do a journey that normally takes 20 minutes. And I mean 2 hours to get to the studio and then 2 hours to get back home. So I thought, as there is enough work to do on the copy for the website, think about the direction of the stationery business, working on the hieroglyphs book, (you get the picture) that it would make more sense to shut the studio on the Wednesday. This also meant leaving early on the Tuesday to avoid the rush as the strike was due to start at 7pm.

The thing about shutting for a day is you expect it to all run smoothly, like every other day and then the proverbial fan appears. London Business School called us in a panic asking for our assistance on filling in approximately 700 certificates. This is something we do every year for them, but this year there was a little bit of a mix up on the part of the print buyer. Clare called up and was so stressed I could not see how we could not not assist. She turned out to be good fun to deal with, despite the stressful situation. Unfortunately the late arrival of the certificates to the studio and the additional text that needed to be added, increased both the cost and the duration.

Sarah also came in with an envelope from Ruth at Ruth Kaye Design. Ruth is looking to get some writing on a kind of paper called ‘Skin’. So you can imagine what this feels like. I did some trials and left it overnight. The next day, the Tuesday, I came in and ran my finger over it, and it smudged. I did have some Dr PH Martins Spectralite Bronze and Copper, they both worked a charm but can only be used for formal script work. Usually it is the quick scripts that work all the time, but the problem here is the paper is coated and slick but the writing needs to be in a metallic colour.

Tuesday saw us rushing to leave but still had time for a visit from the wonderful Alyson Hurst from GFSmith. We have some plans on the table which I will talk about as they come closer to fruition. They are VERY exciting.

Sarah also reminded me that I needed to handwrite a letter to be copied and posted out to people who contacted us through Brides Magazine. I wrote the letter out and decided to put Sarah’s name on the bottom as she is the one who would have to deal with them in the end.

I thought it might be better if she didn’t have to sign all of them. And since the recipients would need to know who to ask for, writing her name out clearly was a better option.

Once they copies are made I will write the names in, still debating whether I should address the envelopes to correspond with the writing on the letter. Will decide when Sarah is back!

I work up on Wednesday and checked the email. We work off a Microsoft Exchange Server and the laptop at home is configured to the server so I can work from home. We also have Go To My PC so I can log in from anywhere in the world and check email (if the main studio PC is on!). Not sure if that is a good thing or not. I had about 10 urgent things to deal with, arrived via both email and phone calls to the mobile. It is always the way, no?

Rebecca at The Communication Store needed calligraphy on about 150 invitations and Lucy at Halpern also called to finalise a job for some last minute invitations for Tiffany’s. Needless to say, nothing could be sent to the studio as no one was in to receive it, so it all had to wait for Thursday morning delivery. Got some of what I needed to get done dealt with but no where nearly as much.

Thursday morning bright and early! Got in for 7:30 and started prepping for the day. Clare from LBS was bringing in some of the certificates for me to test the paper, a courier was on his way with all the certificates. Then things started to arrive. The invitations for Rebecca arrived (with a Versace logo on it) and Lucy’s invitations for Tiffanys came in immediately after. I had already stared to make a dent on LBS certificates. Then the box of stuff, birthday cards from Liberty arrived, and then Jess and Jo Malone called up for us to design a Pour Memoir card for them, as well as to talk about another invitation for the JM London – all to be done in our Small Capitals.

I had a wonderful surprise, Macki, who I used to work with at another event planning company called and is now at Family, dealing with a job for Annika at The Communication Store. I love reunions!

I did promise to document what happens when we start a job for stationery so here it is. The first thing we do is get the text. I then mix up some Process Black. This is a very dense black with wonderful contrast capacity. Problem is it takes very long to dry before we can put it on the scanner bed. Angelo scans it at 1200dpi, imports it into PhotoShop and does his magic putting it together. We have to find out size, weight and colour of card, if a gild or brushed edge is wanted and if envelopes are needed as well. We also need to check to see if the invitations will need names written on once they are printed, and if envelopes will need to be addressed as well. The reason for checking all of this, i.e. if calligraphy will be needed after the printing is completed, is to book it in so we know it needs to be done.

So this is what the initial thing looks like. I use Character High White Wove to write on as it is clean and crisp and does not create any unnecessary scanning problems. If I want something that is more artistic I would use my favourite Colourplan but it does have a tooth to it and make for more problematic scanning.

Once the ink is dry it is scanned and digitised. Working on an A5 template in PhotoShop, the text is then placed where we think it should go and we print if off to check the justification, centring and scale. Looking at it on the screen is no good, you need to see it for real. All of this I leave up to Angelo. Since his calligraphy practise is going so well, he has a much better understanding of letter spacing and placement. Far better than any graphic designer trying to use hand lettering for the same thing, except maybe Rachel at Mount Street!

The image then has to be sent to Mount Street with the necessary information for the printing and envelopes and then we play the waiting game – it usually takes about 4 working days to get an invitations litho (flat) printed. This is being done in black on oyster card, nice and simple! Will take a photo of the final product when it arrives next week as well as a mock up envelope, if we have to do one.

Once the Jo Malone text was completed and moved off the desk I had to do something known to gym bunnies as ‘SuperSetting’ which is where you work 2 or 3 different muscle groups at the same time. In this instance it was to do both the Tiffany invitations (on the left) and Versace invitations (on the right), in tandem. I started with the Versace ones but ran out of invites so while the bike was on its way with more I did the Tiffany ones. Once dry they were proof ready by Sarah and 2 mistakes were found on the Tiffany ones which needed correcting and then left to dry. With both jobs completed I went back to the LBS certificates.

Last week I promised to take some photos of envelopes done in decorative copperplate, these are only partial ones as they have friends addresses on them. I would never use this kind of over the top envelope work for clients as the cost would be too high. I would think somewhere in the region of £5.50 (10 words) plus something like a £5.00 supplement for the decoration and hatching. Hope you enjoy them.

The day ended with us saying Bon Voyage to Sarah as she heads off to her home in Sicily for a week, to clean up all that volcanic ash. It is always a slough when Sarah goes off as we all need to double up on work but makes us realise how important all the members of studio are. I always tell them there is no way I would be able to run this business without them. In fact, some people are happy when Sarah answers the phone and not me! Temperamental Artisans! Huh! Speaking of which, we had a call from Javier at By Appointment Only Design to do some placement envelopes and escort cards. To which was added Placecards and then table numbers, all this after the original order of stationery arrived so more had to be sent. Javier’s work will be done this week (8th of Nov) as the stationery for the last minute additions (placecards and table numbers) have yet to arrive.

Friday saw Keiko and Angelo working away on separate things. Keiko on LBS certificates and Angelo on his caps, moving back to Italic with ‘The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog’ – every letter of the alphabet is in that sentence!

Friday was also the celebration of Divali, so took a card to the wonderful guys at Roti Joupa. They are from Trinidad as well and the food they make is great.

I stayed back late on Friday to continue with the tidying up of the studio.

Will post a special weekend blog as I know some visitors (other calligrpahers) are keen to see how the studio is coming along.

Thanks for reading. Now back to the LBS Certificates.

Quiet Week?

2010-11-06T09:29:00.001-07:00

Once again I am sitting here, on a Saturday wondering what happened last week. Sarah and I decided that it might be best to sit down at the end of the day, or even half way through the day, and then at the end, and write up what has happened. I could not think of a better way to waste time! That said, the photo archive does assist in figuring out what happened. It is unfortunate we can’t tell you everything that goes on due to confidentiality issues but slowly it will come out.

This was a sad week and mummy was heading back to Trinidad on Tuesday the 26th, after staying with Alistair and myself for almost 3 months. Both Ali and I were sad, as was everyone else in the studio, they all grew to love mummy. What is there not to like!

The studio still looked like a bombsite as we waited patiently for the expandable foam to seal most of the cracks that let air in the studio, cold air I might add – it is October! The Twinwall (polycarbonate sheeting for insulation) is on order. Sarah is in her coat as it is so cold upstairs.

Last week ended with a job to do for Karen at Olympic print which ran over unto Monday. I was surprised to see that the cards were so small but there was another problem and that was the issue of the text being thermographed. This creates a raised surface which catches the nib as you are writing and causes it to skip, splashing ink on the invitation! So do be carful of what you do where calligraphers need to write. No envelopes were needed.

The week started off with a call from Simon and Christina at the Berkeley, needing a certificate for a fantastic idea they are launching. They wanted a STUNNING presentation certificate, and I had the perfect idea in keeping in true Berkeley/Claridges/Connaught style. The basis was a ‘Certificate of Marriage’ we did for Mark Niemierko but with twist. I decided that since an image of the Connaught Bar Logo was needed on the top, encapsulating it would be useful and unlike the ‘Marriage Certificate’ I wanted a sunk plate border here. I extended the embossed border to include the ribbon as well and not to allow the ribbon to leave the sunk area, well, raised in this instance.

We also had some sketches to do for two clients, who can’t be name. Needless to say, one wanted to see a sketch when I had the time and the other needed it in the afternoon of that day. It always surprises me that people think you can solve their problems with design, in a few minutes, as though you are just sitting there waiting on them to call, when they have been grappling with it for days, and in some cases weeks. Calligraphy design is not magic guys! It is hard bloody work! Not to mention, the ink needs to dry before we can scan it! Sigh! So no images unfortunately but if they both come to fruition I will put them up. They were charged for the work. The today for today was also charged the rush rate! Same day is double the fee.

While all of this was going on two things came to conclusion.

I had a lovely chat with Charlotte and Nathalie at Dior as their job was coming to an end. As promised, here is the envelope in our slanted quick script, in white ink on GFSmith Colourplan Ebony. The white is a a monoline pen sent to us by Masayo of the Sakura Pen company. The pen shocked us! It is delicate to write with, great ink flow and brilliant coverage over the black. I can only thank Masayo. They also sent some gold and silver pens for us to test and, like the white, we simply could not anticipate how well they would work.

We used the silver on a job for Antonia at SpecificMedia, another lovely client. She really took the time to talk with us to understand some of the issues with her job. We were asked to use a formal script on the invitations in silver, but as the silver print was thermographed (this is where glue and powders are used to print in), I could not match the plasticity and shine with calligraphy paint (gouache) as gouache is flat and not shiny. We used an upright quick script for the envelopes, this script is based on our formal italic and is almost half the price of the formal hand making it great for addressing the envelopes (higher word count) and the formal script on the invitations. Colour of the week seemed to be black. No image due to confidentiality!

Jessica Carder, who we work with a lot, in her capacity in Communications at Jo Malone, is getting married. I must say, I am probably only a little less excited than Jess! I was so happy to be able to produce something stunning for her and this week the Dark Grey envelopes finally arrived. Her invitations were in our Loose Modern Script supported by our Small Caps. All the stationery was printed at Mount Street Printers. Rachel at Mount Street and I debated on processes.

Jess loves our white on dark grey and was set on that, but I am quite keen to counterchange our colour matching (dark ink on light paper vs. light ink on dark paper), but there is also a hierarchy of stationery one has to conscious of. We decided on to die stamp in white ink on dark grey colourplan (GFSmith), 700gsm card with a sunk plate border. I have tried really hard to capture the raised lettering as well as the sunk plate. I have had to smudge some the RSVP info though will repost once the event has passed.

Little hodgepodge, sorry about that, the black is for Dior and the grey if for Jess.

These are Jess’ envelopes and the Dior job getting packed up by Sarah.

One of our other jobs came. Will try to document when we have to do stationery ourselves a little better. I did the text for this job last week and it arrived this week. beautiful menus in our ‘Upright Copperplate’ with names to be written at the top and table names to be done. All done for Kate Cella wedding.

Because I was using a ruling pen for the table names, we thought it would be interesting to post them being made. Have not posted a vid on here so this is test for me as well. If not you can find them at youtube.com/user/PaulAntonioScribe

Here are Kate’s Table-Name Cards.

We had a call from the team at Liberty wanting some birthday cards done, for the year! There are close to 3000 of them. It is funny how these things happen. Valeria came to see us, she brought the cards, great to write on, thankfully! We were even willing to post them off but the additional bit need to be sent would take too much time for us unfortunately. Not to mention would have increased the cost of the job. Spoke with Veronika and Preets as well and in the end came up with a best price. I do want to take some time here explaining about large jobs. The turn around for that week was also quite tight, today for tomorrow. I have just re-read that, we did not do 3000 of them for the next day! We are doing about 300 a month.

If we have the same text to handwrite, there are no real economies of scale, we don’t write faster, it is not like printing. It is a shame, but that is the way it is so reducing the price based on volume can only ever be a slight reduction.

Very itchy eyes! I did try not the mix up the Bleedproof White with the eye-drops.

This week also saw me teaching Keiko some copperplate script and assisting Angelo with his studies in Roman Caps. Angelo has been with me for about 16months now and is progressing beautifully. We had some issues with his caps and I really had to think long and hard as to how to help him along. I decided to get him started on Roman Capitals – specifically pen written ones based on Imperial Caps. As all calligraphers know, not an easy thing. He has really enjoyed it but more importantly I has really helped. He is now moving back to the italic armed with the knowledge of Imperial Capital proportioning.

I promised Keiko to develop her copperplate and so this is the beginning of it.

I have some extensive copperplate study sheets and looking at Keiko work on these made me think I need to consolidate them, there are 10 years of copperplate instruction there, making me think it is time to pull my finger out and get that book done! Just not enough time in the day.

Thursday started with the arrival of the Twinwall! Thank goodness. This meant spending Friday pulling apart the upstairs and turning it upside down. I generally try to do any changes on a Friday so there is no disruption to Sarah, as she is not in on Fridays, but it is back to normal in time for her to start work on Monday! Needless to say, she was looking forward to a warm studio, so was I. Heating is not cheap! I cannot tell you how much I appreciated Angelo’s assistance here. Talk about experiencing the true side of being an apprentice.

The Twinwall was HUGE! 3.5 x 1m. Getting it upstairs was a chore.

The curtains have been here for about 4 years and kept the studio warm, but it also kept the place dark. Needless to say they all came down, again. I had to put them back up as it was starting to get too cold between the foam drying and the twinwall arriving. Angelo started cleaning the glass

Once cleaned we prepared to start cutting the sheets to fit into the panes of glass.

Thursday also saw the arrival of out new fandangle A3 Cannon IX4000 printer!

There he is awaiting connecting and installing. Angelo simply could not wait to play with this.

Alistair came by, in his usual wonderful way, as he always keeps an eye out for things that would be useful in the studio. He saw 4 large CD racks and promptly brought them over. 3 are in place already.

The week ended with a trip to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. The curator, Dr Stephen Quirke, is a very good friend of mine and was having a book launch. The museum has been moved around and it is a fantastic space. The artefacts are accessible. If you get a chance please go!

Sarah, her wonderful husband, Michael and myself went along. Nice to have a day out. Something I have been planning for the team. The ‘Book of the Dead’ exhibition is opening soon at the British Museum so an outing will be planned! Who doesn’t love Egyptian Hieroglyphs! I also saw some work I have at the Petrie museum which I completely forgot about – this is a terrible image if it though. It is 2.5m tall. Below is Stephen and Jan Picton (introducing him, not that he needed introduction!)

I walked home in the pouring rain.

I came in on the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, and did much tidying up, sweeping and mopping. The studio is almost there! Almost how I want it, well until we add something new to them mix. I made up a little table for our stationery department this desk will only be used for stationery we produce, shelves to store samples and will NOT be a desk to just rest things on, right"! The desk is on the right and now turned to fit the space. Will take some images of the studio as it is now and put it in the next blog.

Museum Week

2010-10-29T02:34:00.001-07:00

This week saw the production (ha!) of two videos. One on a Copperplate Minuscule (lowercase) and one on a little fiasco we had. More of that later.

The Copperplate Vid is on You Tube at ……. and still debating on whether on not to put up the other vid!

Caroline Perry dropped by to collect a design for ‘something’ I did for her and Gerri from Love&Lord came by to brighten up my day! Came up with a stunning design for her – let’s see how that is going to go. Stunning = expensive to produce! She loved it, awaiting budget from the client!

List,list and more lists!

Had an interesting job as well – to do an invitation like a 14th century Italian Manuscript! So excited. Thankfully we are not dealing with the printing of this thing. I would not know where to begin. The client even asked if it was possible to bind the thing in vellum, real vellum! Oh the joy if they do.

The beginning of the week saw us working on some beautiful little place card and placement envelopes for the lovely Silvia at Lanza & Baucina. The placecards had beautiful gold, gilt edges and came from Mount Street Printers. The card was perfect to write on as usual but the names were SOOOO long we had to write them at 2.5mm in height, instead of the usual 3.25mm.

As well as a last minute job for Rebecca at The Communication Store – 30 placecards needed tomorrow!

Yep! Those are CD holders. Funny how once something becomes useful you can’t seem to find them anywhere. We have ones that have been cut down so they lay flat too. Will point it out later.

Silvia also asked for some ink and a pen. Unfortunately we used a quill for this job and we don’t use ink if we are colour matching, we use Gouache, an opaque watercolour, so getting the consistency right is key, not to mention sharpening the quill. Thankfully it was not needed but we did send it on.

The middle of the week saw me sending off some work for the Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society Regional Day in York. I am a part of the Spencerian Study Group, lead by the very talented Brian Walker. These are some of the bits I sent off. The script is Spencerian (a 19th century American hand, it evolved out of copperplate, and is the underpinning structure for American handwriting). The decoration and bird flourishing also belong to the script and it’s period. The Bird Flourishing is part of a practice known as Off Hand Flourishing. Sorry about the wonky images!

Also had some further certificate for Tony at Fullers. Unfortunately it was not on the usual, wonderful Colourplan but on some AWFUL coated paper, I had to use a marker! OH! and there is the CD Rack I cut in half to work horizontally. The ink, even using a marker, stayed wet for overnight. I am using an Edding marker in this photo, but ended up using a Manuscript Pen Company Italic Marker. The ink was more solid on the coated paper.

This week also saw me working on some bits to be used in the British Museum’s upcoming Book of the Dead exhibition, where I will be teaching a workshop on the script used to write the book of the dead called Cursive Hieroglyphs. John Taylor and I had a chat about what could be done for the public to touch, and look at up close. Had to send them some sheets of papyrus, yep, they were just lying around the studio, along with the rushes the ancient Egyptians supposedly used to write this script. There may be some papyrus handling and tearing! Not sure if 5 sheets was enough now. I am currently working on the script’s ductus (stroke number and order), so there is tonnes of the stuff in studio. Also sent on the rush which was used with soot black, again a supposed recipe the ancient Egyptians used. I am hoping they have their own Gum Arabic to put in the exhibition case. This is done on the papyrus we get today which does not look like what was used traditionally, you can see this under the glass at the museum – so much still to do on this!

Nazia and Sharv dropped by to talk shop as well as to finally see the studio in operation. Shrav and I had a great time talking lettering possibilities but I also managed to find the time to do a ruling pen ‘Happy Birthday’ for Naz done in blue with gold powder dropped in while the ink was wet.

Had a book insert to do as well. These usually start off with someone asking us to write in the book itself. We always suggest to do the calligraphy on a separate sheet and tip it in, as we never know if the paper of the book will accept ink and the WORST thing is when you touch the ink to the page and it bleeds. The work was done on, you guessed it, Colourplan! We do these for Wedding Albums too. But it really is in Bibles that this kind of writing is almost impossible, due to the paper, not to me being wicked!

In between all of this the Dior Job arrived - something like 700 envelopes and invitations to address – beautiful black colourplan with our Quick Script III in white ink! We asked for the envelopes while the invitations were being printed. Will put up an example once the envelopes are all completed.

Dealing with the PR Team at Dior is always a joy and when they mentioned what they were planning months ago I was consulted on paper, making our job considerably easier, as we knew we could write on the stationery. If only other PR teams though like this instead of printing the stationery and then sending on impossibly paper to work on, would save so much hair from falling out! Will post a sample of an envelope in next week’s blog.

And the week ended with the Fiasco! So we were working on these black envelopes and were sent a very limited stock. Not to mention, the envelopes were square, so not regular stationery. Needless to say, we ended up having to make 20 of them by hand. Fortunately we had the black paper in A2 sheets in studio so Keiko, Angelo and myself set to making them. Thank God for a wonderful team.

This is me making up the template and cutting up the first envelope to see how the scoring, folding and sticking (done with double sided tape) would look when made up into a completed envelope. You could not tell the difference from what we did to the original. Still, this was very labour intensive.

Division of Labour kicked in. Keiko did the drawing from the template unto the black paper and Angelo and I did the cutting down.

After they were call cut. I scored them and we folded them. Keiko then did the cutting up of the double sided tape and Angelo and I did the sticking down. We all worked on peeling off the white backing and sticking the sides to the back to make up the envelope. Nearly had another fiasco by sticking the top bit to the sides but that was avoided. Talk about a bonding exercise. Sarah complained that we should have waited for her, she is brilliant at this kind of thing, Ruth and Sophie at Ruth Kaye Design can attest to this!

That was the end of the week for work.

All this time we are sitting here awaiting the TwinWall Sheeting to place on the glass to arrive. It will help with the heating in the upstairs of the studio – where all the admin work and stationery is put together. Currently it is freezing and as winter is almost upon us it is not fun.

The following week sees us starting work on the square, black envelopes, but that will be the next posting!

Studio Work

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We got back from the Lake District all excited and invigorated. I came up with some new ideas based on what I had seen at the paper mill and what I was able to discuss with Alyson from GFSmith. But also from what I saw at the Designer Wedding Show the previous week.

Thanks to the team at the DWS as well as our friends on the By Appointment Only Design, Javier and Tony and Team: Helen at The Walton Street Stationery Company: Britta at The Couture Gallery for putting up with us!

Here is some of the work that happened this week

Some delicately flourished Spencerian script

More Spencerian in our colours – white on grey. All the letters to the guys at the mill, and the staff at GFSmith were done like this and sent off.

Nicola and Keiko beavering away. My mum is also in the corner, under the stairs, learning basic, upright italic.

It seemed this week ended with certificates galore! The ‘London Business School’ ones were A3, I could not believe it, these were done in our own ‘Kensington Script’. This is the standard ‘Princes Trust’ ones where all the text is handwritten in copperplate. The ‘Fullers’ certificates were in their usual 'upright italic.

They were all left ready for Sarah to proof read on Monday. And that was last week!

What we work on

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It is funny how this blog started.

I am in the process of work on some little vids for the website, yes, I know it is still a holding page! And so been in touch with some of our suppliers to get samples to play with.

This has started a series of visits to where things get made and what better way to start the blog.

On Monday and Tuesday last week (11th and 12th October) we, Angelo, Alistair and I, went off to James Cropper Plc with the lovely people from our paper supplier, GFSmith to see how Colourplan, the main paper we use, is made.

It was BRILLIANT!

The view from the bridge! Below is the outside of the mill.

Bales of Colourplan awaiting recycling, I nearly fainted. And there, embedded in all that colour was my Tabriz Blue (which our ‘Thank You’ cards are currently being printed in – will be available for sale soon!)

The next thing we saw what the pulped paper, so beautiful and clean.

And this is what it comes wrapped in!

We stayed on at a beautiful hotel on the shores of Lake Wyndemere with the other attendees talking about Paper. Thanks so much to Alyson Hurst and Beth Powell at GFSmith!

Blog at the Beginning

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Well finally we have a blog!

After so many people asking us to start one I finally gave in. Note that Sarah will be dealing with updating this, not me.

We will aim to update it ever Monday.

If there is anything you would like to see, please do let us know.

Always,

Paul