Video: Almost Lost Arts: Traditional Crafts and the Artisans Keeping Them Alive
What does it mean to be a maker, artist, or artisan in the twenty-first century? In her new book, Almost Lost Arts (Chronicle Books, 2019), Emily Freidenrich explores the work of twenty artisans from points worldwide who practice their craft using traditional techniques and analog technologies. Three Boston-based artists who specialize in calligraphy and handmade signs engaged in a conversation with Freidenrich and museum curator Narayan Khandekar to discuss the rewards and challenges of using slow, intentional processes in a fast-paced digital world, and to explore the significance of the human presence in objects or artwork.
About the Speakers
- Emily Freidenrich, Author and Journalist
- Josh Luke and Meredith Kasabian, Founders, Best Dressed Signs
- Margaret Shepherd, Calligrapher and Author
- Narayan Khandekar, Director, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, and Senior Conservation Scientist, Harvard Art Museums
Emily Freidenrich is a researcher, author, and art lover living in Seattle with her creative director husband and energetic Corgi. Her background in art history, archaeology, and museology informs her approach to modern and contemporary art, illustration, design, folk art, craft, and what it means to be an artist today. She is also the author of The Art of Beatrix Potter (for Chronicle Books, 2016, as Emily Zach), and works by day in book publishing.
Narayan Khandekar is the director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies and the director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums. He received a first-class honors degree and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Melbourne, followed by a postgraduate diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has worked at the Hamilton Kerr Institute of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University; Melbourne University Gallery; and the Museum Research Laboratory of the Getty Conservation Institute. He has a long-standing interest in the materials and techniques of artists and is an author on over sixty publications.
Margaret Shepherd was born in Ames, Iowa. She studied brush painting in prewar Saigon before graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1969. Today, she lives in Boston with her husband, David Friend, and has not only authored but also hand-lettered fourteen books about calligraphy. Her basic book Learn Calligraphy is now a classic in the field. She has participated in many exhibitions and lectured about topics related to her field. She takes special interest in encouraging beginners and nonartists to try calligraphy and learn about its history. She has taught workshops in Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Finland. Building on the revival of interest in pen and ink, Shepherd has also written three books about communication in general. The Art of the Handwritten Note continues to inspire people today, more than fifteen years after she was told: “that’s a dying art.”
Best Dressed Signs is an all-by-hand sign painting company located in Boston, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the craft of hand-painted signs, custom lettering, logo design, gold leaf, and mural painting, Best Dressed Signs offers quality and attractive hand-crafted signage and design. In addition to designing and painting, founders Josh Luke and Meredith Kasabian also curate and participate in gallery art shows, conduct sign painting demonstrations, and give lectures on historical and cultural contexts of sign painting. They also co-founded the Pre-Vinylite Society, a loose network of sign enthusiasts and advocates for a renewed interest in the aesthetic-built environment.
Presented on 10/16/19 by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
Transcript
Almost Lost Arts: Traditional Crafts and the Artisans Keeping Them Alive
[00:00:07.14] I'd like to now introduce Emily. She is a researcher, author, and art lover based in Seattle. Her background is in art history, archeology, and museology, which inform her approach to modern and contemporary art, illustration, design, folk art, craft, and what it means to be an artist today, like the other people on our program.
[00:00:33.21] Aside from being the author of Almost Lost Arts, she's also the author of The Art of Beatrix Potter, which I love Beatrix Potter, and works by day in book publishing when she's not doing all that other stuff. So it's now my pleasure to bring Emily up to the podium, and she will introduce our speakers and the rest of the program. Thank you.
[00:01:01.33] Thank you so much for that introduction. I'm Emily Freidenrich. I'm the author of Almost Lost Arts. I am so honored to be here this evening with the Harvard Museum's for Science and Culture and the Peabody Museum. Thank you for having us to celebrate this book. And thank you all for joining us, braving the impending bomb cyclone. So thank you, Bostonites, I appreciate it. And thank you, everyone who's tuning in on the livestream. Hi to everyone at home.
[00:01:33.15] I won't lie. I am pretty over the moon about this. This is all really exciting. It's really great to be here. And it's so fitting that we're here with the Peabody, which is an institution for the study of humans, our ancient history and our culture. And it's all for a book that explores those art forms, techniques, and technologies that often have roots that go back hundreds and even thousands of years.
[00:02:01.13] I'm going to get through some of my slides here. There is evidence that Neolithic peoples in Cyprus had sophisticated weaving technology even 9,000 years ago. Julia Astreyou the Cypriot weaver profiled in this book, is one of the few weavers today who carries on these traditions that were passed down to her by the weavers before her and teaches them to the new generations.
[00:02:24.68] Or the thousand year old practice of New Mexico's few enjarradora. Enjarradora is literally "plasteress" in the Adobe tradition. And Anita Rodriguez has imparted this knowledge to Joanna Keen Lopez, just as generations of Indo Hispanic women before them passed it down to each other and the ancestral Pueblo before them passed it down from women to woman and person to person. For these women, the weight of that history, of what once was, of what they are holding on to, and what they have brought back is felt every time they go to the old places to source their clay and mud. It's felt every time they mix the Adobe or every time they prepare the clay slip paint and the materials they used to make and maintain vessels for living.
[00:03:17.00] I also talked to Porfirio Gutierrez, who was here recently. He and his family are from Teotitlan Del Valle in Oaxaca. And they have revived the Zapotec techniques for indigenous plants to make their vivid dyes seen on this book cover. And many of those recipes go back to Colombian times, before the Spanish.
[00:03:40.38] Their beautiful rugs and textiles are woven into patterns of power that call back to the ruins of Mitla, a nearby Zapotec site. And their work has also greatly reduced the use of synthetic dyes by other weaver and dyer families in their community that everyone saw was poisoning their homes.
[00:04:01.26] For the 22 features in this book, I talked to artists and artisans all over the world sometimes traveling or by phone or email or Skype and any way that worked for me to learn more about their work. For example, in London, Peter Bellerby searched for two years to find the perfect bespoke globe that he dreamed of as a gift for his father's 80th birthday. But no option satisfied him. So he made it himself and founded a Bellerby & Company Globe Makers.
[00:04:33.75] Or in Italy, where I talked to the Fonderia Artistica Battaglia Milano, which is the oldest bronze foundry in Italy. It has survived wars and a century of upheaval and social change and continues to be one of the world's premier foundries for the lost wax method of bronze casting.
[00:04:54.23] Or in Japan, where fewer artisans are certified in the traditional arts each year, as young people pursue other careers that don't require decades of apprenticeship and time. But Muneaki Shamode is a third generation kintsugi-shi in Japan. He and his father practiced the makie or lacquer arts, and kinsugi, which means golden joinery, is one of the most beautiful of them. And this is the technique by which ceramics are repaired using rice lacquer and gold powder so that the pieces, when repaired, are more beautiful than before they were broken. You can see the gold lines on that piece he's repairing.
[00:05:36.42] Through a translator, I also interviewed ceramicist Lee Eun Bum in Korea, who practices Goryeo celadon in much the same way as the unique Korean celadon tradition has been practiced for centuries. But he creates modern forms and fresh designs that reflect his ideas as a contemporary Korean artist.
[00:05:56.03] Or in my hometown in Seattle, I talked to Brittany Nicole Cox, one of two people in North America with a master's degree in antiquarian horology, the study of time. She specializes in restoring 17th century timepieces, as well as exquisite automatons, like the singing birds that you see here, and 100-year-old music boxes.
[00:06:19.87] I also spoke with incredibly devoted wet plate photographers in Portland and one in Tennessee, Giles Clement seen here, known for his huge amber type portraits of everyday people, jazz musicians, and the occasional celebrity, all very devoted and talented artists.
[00:06:38.41] And many of them are following their birthright or heritage, and others have sought out their practice. All have studied and apprenticed and taken a long time to earn their skill set. They all draw on the deep past every time they start a new day of work. Certainly, our way back ancestors didn't have neon signs, like those produced by Jeff Friedman's team at "Let There be Neon" in New York, or whose vintage signs they lend a hand to restoring Cuba through their work with Havana Light.
[00:07:09.36] You might also have seen the national audio company in Springfield, Missouri in the news this week as the only remaining manufacturers of cassette tapes. The shortage of ferric oxide, which is a key ingredient to creating the professional audio recording tape, seemed to threaten their production. But good news, just this morning on their Instagram, they confirmed that they received 11 tons of it. And they are back on track. So don't worry, indie bands. You'll get your cassette tapes.
[00:07:39.72] So you see that, if you start to peel back the layers even a little bit, there are so many stories. And not one is less interesting than the last. This was the most compelling part about working on this book, collecting the human stories that are bound to these practices and that are remnants of our cultural inheritance, stories that show what these artists create or mend or preserve, enriches our communities. But we can only see them if we know that they are there.
[00:08:10.14] So I wrote this book to shine a spotlight on a few of them and so that hopefully we will start to see these makers among our own neighbors and so that we can offer them our support, as they offer their work and their art to us. I'm excited for you to hear from some of them tonight. So we're going to take a few moments to turn over the stage here. And then we'll engage in our discussion. I will introduce them before we do so.
[00:08:37.76] First, I have Boston's own sign painting duo Meredith Kasabian and Josh Luke Best Dressed Signs joining us, their incredible work shown here; Harvard's own Narayan Khandekar, the director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, senior conservation scientist, and also the curator for the Forbes Pigment Collection and the Gettens Collection of Binding Media and Varnishes here at Harvard Art Museums-- incredible collection that I got to preview this morning, amazing.
[00:09:11.83] Last but not least, as an aspiring calligrapher myself, I am really excited for the author of The Art of the Handwritten Note and calligrapher Margaret Shepherd to join us as well. Thank you for taking the time to be here and, most of all, for contributing to this book and for sharing your work and experiences and expertise with me. It means so much, and it's all come together to create such a beautiful finished book. And I'm just really happy that you're here.
[00:09:40.06] I'd like to just dive right in. So I want to give you each a moment to talk about what you do and what first drew you to that work, kind of in your own words. Margaret, maybe we can start with you. Your essay was so beautiful about your-- it was sort of your personal love letter to calligraphy and handwriting.
[00:10:02.79] I've done calligraphy all my life. In fact, I think I've been motivated to do it ever since I flunked it in third grade. If I can do it, anybody can do it. And I've written 18 books, mainly for beginners, to encourage them to pick up a pen. I've also freelanced, designed book covers, retirement citations, memorial plaques. You name it, I've done it. If you went to MIT during the '80s and '90s, I wrote your diploma.
[00:10:41.86] But mainly, I love the way the letters look. I love how it feels to write them, day after day, hour after hour. And I like sharing that with people so that they can communicate better and feel better about their words.
[00:11:00.26] That's beautiful. And you're stubborn, too, I guess if you flunked that third grade calligraphy or cursive class. What brought you brought you back to it? Margaret, what brought you back to calligraphy after you flunked cursive?
[00:11:14.52] I knew there had to be a better way. And I think maybe a lot of people felt that way. But I trusted it. And that's what I encourage people to do. Trust your feeling about how your words look and how it feels to write them.
[00:11:34.79] It's really beautiful. I'd like to hear from Josh next actually. Josh, you had such a great experience that you shared with me about the first time you really noticed a hand painted sign. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and more of your background?
[00:11:48.92] Yes, I'll try to be brief because I tend to mumble and ramble. But I'll try my best. But first of all, thank you so much for having us in your book. It's absolutely beautiful. And when we looked through it, we were just so amazed at all of the incredible talent in that book. And if you guys haven't seen it yet, you will soon. And it's incredible. So thank you.
[00:12:12.71] Thanks, Josh.
[00:12:14.56] And the first time-- I was working at the art store actually in downtown San Francisco. And I had recently graduated from art school. And I didn't know what to do next and trying to figure things out. And as I was staring out the window out of pure boredom, I noticed there were some repairman that were doing some work on our window next door. And what they were doing was they were scraping away-- or there had been paint on the front of the window. And they were scraping away these layers of paint and revealing this absolutely beautiful cigar shop gilded sign.
[00:13:07.22] And actually, this is a good time to show you.
[00:13:10.28] Yeah, show and tell. Let's see this.
[00:13:12.86] But this is what gold leaf, or real gold leaf, looks like. It's 23 carat leaves of actual gold that are laid onto the inside of the glass. So as they were scraping away these layers of paint, an incredibly beautiful sign was being revealed for a cigar company. And it just got me thinking about that as an art form and got me curious about the history of it.
[00:13:42.49] And so that led me down to the path to finding the only all by hand sign shop that existed in San Francisco at the time-- New Bohemia Signs. And so yeah, one thing led-- I'll try not to ramble. So that's basically what began it all, my self discovery of this art form, which it took me till now-- I didn't realize I'd be doing this for this long.
[00:14:13.40] I love that story.
[00:14:14.45] Thank you.
[00:14:15.71] And when we were talking about that, Meredith, you were remembering stories from your childhood, seeing some of your grandfather's signs around your hometown. Do you want to talk about that and where your early connections to sign painting and--
[00:14:31.31] Yeah, so my grandfather was a sign painter in Watertown Mass, right over there. Yeah, he was a sign painter and I never really thought about it. He passed away when I was 13. So I mean, I think most people, especially before their teenage years, don't think about signs and look around.
[00:14:55.40] But my dad, when we would go to visit my grandparents, would always point out, oh, Papa did that bank over there. There were bingo signs that I specifically remember my father pointing out. And sign painting was always there, but it wasn't really anything I ever paid attention to until I met Josh, when I was 30.
[00:15:24.71] And so when I first met him, it brought all this stuff back. We met in San Francisco. I visited him at New Bohemia Signs, where he worked. And I walked in the first time, and it just smelled like my grandfather. It just brought everything back. And I have probably thought more about my grandfather in the last decade than I ever did before.
[00:15:48.49] But yeah, we went and visited the church that they went to in Watertown. And there's bingo signs that are hand painted. We went in and talked to the maintenance person or whoever takes care of that kind of stuff. But he wasn't there at that time. He said, they don't keep those kinds of records. And so we don't have official confirmation that it's his, but I'm pretty sure that it's his sign.
[00:16:14.48] Yeah, I doubt they'd switch it out in the meantime.
[00:16:16.61] Yeah, sorry-- I can make one correction for the internet audience. New Bohemia was one of the only hand painted sign shops, not the only.
[00:16:28.23] There were a few of them then.
[00:16:29.24] For you guys out there that are counting.
[00:16:31.78] Correction score. Excellent.
[00:16:35.63] That's great. You're right. And I'm sure you have a little bit of a different pathway leading up to come into the Forbes Collection here. Do you want to talk a little bit about your background and what drew you to where you are now?
[00:16:47.03] Yeah, sure, I have a background in chemistry, and I was doing a PhD in chemistry at Melbourne University in Australia. And I heard on the radio-- I used to be at the bench pouring things into flasks and Erlenmeyer beakers and things. And listening to the radio and there was a story about the Dalai Lama, who liked watching movies, but he had limited access to spare parts for projectors in Tibet.
[00:17:14.95] And so what he did when the projector broke was pulled it apart, worked out what was wrong, fixed it, put it back together again. And that idea of reverse engineering is something that really struck me as a very powerful way of understanding what's going on.
[00:17:30.68] And so what I ended up doing is reverse engineering paintings. And what I do is look at paintings. I want to understand how the artist created that work, how it's painted, how it's made, the entire thought process, what goes into creating that work of art. And so to do that, you need a library of standards. And the Forbes Pigment Collection is that library of standards. So I can analyze all the pigments that come out of it. I can have a conversation with the artist through their painting.
[00:18:01.96] And so that's what I do. And for me, it's a very powerful way of understanding the art. And so that's how I got into what I do now.
[00:18:11.02] That's beautiful. And I think that idea of reverse engineering really resonated with you two having to kind of come up with interesting new ways to approach sign projects. Does that sound--
[00:18:27.17] I think that goes for everyone involved in our field and probably in many other fields. But I guess that's the exciting part, is that every project is unique and there's a new obstacle and a new thing you've got to figure out and do multiple Google searches on and the correct type of paint and if it'll work, different processes, and then also asking-- there's many sign painting forms that you can ask questions and get answers for various problems that you have. But yeah, I think it's a constant challenge of figuring out what you're doing.
[00:19:12.92] Yeah, I think the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, when I was speaking with the director of that collection for this book, was saying that, there's just no manual for so much of what they do. And I think that goes for so many of the artists that I interviewed too. And, in addition to just testing and trying and failing and trying something different, there's a lot of research, too, that goes into it.
[00:19:35.99] And I was speaking earlier about the ancient connections and the historical connections for so many of the artists. I'd like to hear a little bit about how that history influences each of the work that you do. And Meredith, I think you're especially conscious of the history of signs in any project that you take on in some of your projects outside of Best Dressed Signs. Do you want to speak to a little bit of that?
[00:20:02.71] Sure. So I guess to preface this, my background is actually in English literature. So I come to signs from the perspective of semiotics and how signs operate and how they help us move through space and things like that. So Josh is the designer for Best Dressed Signs. And I paint, but I don't do any of the design work. I'll do the lettering, but I don't design any of it.
[00:20:46.66] So my focus, outside of when we're actually painting signs to get paid, is, we started this group called the Pre-Vinylite Society, which is, it's just a loose network of sign enthusiasts and people that are interested in the aesthetics of our city spaces. And we curate art shows to do with signs. And we've put out the first issue of a journal, The Pre-Vinylite Society Journal. And I use that to write and to research.
[00:21:24.64] So I'm interested in the history of signs, specifically when they made the shift. And I'm talking the Western world, because I don't have experience or knowledge of the signs in other parts of the world. But in the Western world specifically, England and America, the shift from when they changed from pictorial to lettering, because before the late 18th century, most signs were pictorial because most people were illiterate.
[00:21:57.52] And so there was a series of events that happened in London that led to a lot of the pictorial signs coming down. It coincided with a rise in literacy. And so that's one the shift happened where signs became mostly letters instead of pictures. And so that's the aspect of sign history. I mean, there's lots of different-- obviously, with any kind of history, you can dig into specifics. But that's the aspect of it that's most interesting to me.
[00:22:30.68] Yeah, it's super, super fascinating. And I think, Margaret, that probably resonates a lot with you, just that deep history of handwriting. I won't ask you to give us a whole timeline of how that influences you. But do you have any thoughts on the historical precedent for writing by hand every day and doing calligraphy as your profession, what that means to you?
[00:22:54.09] What happens is--
[00:22:55.89] Speak in your microphone, Margaret.
[00:22:56.87] It's a little like having-- I'm sorry.
[00:22:58.38] There we go.
[00:22:59.67] --like having a good ear for music. You can never not see the pen that was behind any particular letter form that you're reading. And that includes drawn, like signage. That includes handwritten. And pretty much any script in the world, I can give you a good guess as to the kind of pen that wrote it and the kind of surface that it was written on. And especially for type, when I see type, I don't just see the type, I see the roots to where that style of type came from and what they were aiming at when they designed it and what the designer of the piece is aiming at when they picked that type. There's just a lot more to the page than what you're seeing.
[00:23:56.98] Do you have a favorite?
[00:24:01.21] Well, you'd have to read my books.
[00:24:03.94] Margeret has written 19 books, by the way.
[00:24:06.41] But I like a lower case Roman that is called Book Hand or Carolingian miniscule or Book Antiqua on your computer. It's wider than Times Roman, and you're not so tired of it as people get of Times Roman. So you asked for a favorite. That's mine.
[00:24:29.35] Love that. Beautiful. This morning Narayan and I, we got to preview the Forbes Collection before coming here today. And Narayan, you were talking to me about some of the oldest color examples. And I think you mentioned there is an ocher from 2, 4 B.C. I'm getting that wrong.
[00:24:50.44] Yeah, something like that.
[00:24:52.17] Do you talk a little bit about some of those bygone color sources and stories?
[00:24:56.12] Yes, absolutely. So I do have some old pigments there that are from Potter from about 2 to 4 B.C. They're colors that are in it the were from an archeological site and excavated. But I do like thinking about color as being essential to everything that people do, because you look at the very oldest works of art, the cave paintings, Australian aboriginal rock art paintings.
[00:25:24.13] And there they have color in them. So you've got people who are working very hard to survive. And they still have enough time to find color to use in the art that they're producing. So color has been there, not just 2 to 4 B.C., but 30,000 to 50,000 B.C. And that's amazing. It's like it's right there from the start.
[00:25:44.50] And color develops meanings as you move through time. So things like ultramarine blue was as expensive as gold in medieval times and used to paint virgin's robes. And if you were very pious, you would pay a lot of money for a lot of ultramarine to prove to the audience in the church just how pious you were.
[00:26:05.02] If you were an important Roman senator, you would have Tyrian purple, which was made from shellfish mollusks-- sorry, made from shellfish and the Murex mollusk. And that would be used to dye your toga. If you're an emperor, you would use the same pigment. So purple became associated with empires and a real sign of how status can be associated with a color using.
[00:26:36.88] Amazing.
[00:26:37.09] So every pigment has its own story in that kind of regard. And then its own downfall-- there is a synthetic version of ultramarine that came along in 1826, and that meant that ultramarine was no longer so valuable. William Perkin invented mauve in 1856. And so suddenly, the late Victorian period was full of socially aspiring people using cheap purple. And so pigments have got these amazing stories of rise and fall. And each pigment has its own story in that way.
[00:27:10.75] Stories upon stories. I'm curious, Meredith, from your perspective-- so in terms of semiotics and sign painting, color means so much. This is a side question that I didn't prep you with at all. But any ideas on how you think about color?
[00:27:29.11] That's a really good question. I have never really considered that. I guess because most of the historical-- obviously, there's no photographs of signs before, before photography. And then those are all black and white. So I guess, I hadn't really considered how color plays into it. Josh might have an idea on that.
[00:27:56.32] Not necessarily. Well, I suppose, as far as the sign trade goes, there was definitely like-- not going as far back as what Meredith was talking about, but maybe more in the earlier part of the 20th century or even up until now, thinking about colors that would-- you're thinking about how quickly you can produce a sign because time is money.
[00:28:25.60] And so a lot of times you're making color considerations based on how many coats it will take to cover for a letter and what different processes you can do. If you ever see signs painted-- you'll see a lot of black and white signs painted on brick, some of those old signs that now are considered ghost signs, you'll see some white lettering with black background. And a lot of times they would be cutting in around the letters instead of painting the white on top of the black so that the white is only one coat and the black is only one coat. So you're saving time in that process.
[00:29:12.34] So I think these days, we're very colorful sign painters.
[00:29:21.95] You guys are very, very colorful.
[00:29:24.04] So we're not as traditional in that sense. And sometimes it does take a little bit longer. And also you have to worry about things fading more, certain colors fading quicker because it's exterior work. But we're excited about just pushing as much bright and color and being very vibrant in our work.
[00:29:51.28] But there is a whole tradition of what colors were best used on sides and also for readability purposes. If it's a highway sign versus a show card that was seen in theater, in the mezzanine of a theater, you can get away with certain colors versus what you can get away with on a freeway sign.
[00:30:14.74] Some practical considerations on context and location all come into play. But you're definitely not at a loss for choices for color these days.
[00:30:24.34] No.
[00:30:25.41] Synthetic option.
[00:30:26.20] Which is interesting. I mean, and when they were grinding their own paints and making their own paints-- and I mean, the toxicity level of it all is something to consider too.
[00:30:40.66] We saw a sample that just said poison on it this morning.
[00:30:44.20] Right. So I'm definitely glad we don't have to make our own paints at this point.
[00:30:50.79] That would take a little bit more time than maybe you have time for, with how busy you guys are. Before I move on to the next question, Margaret, how do you think about color when you are working on a calligraphy project?
[00:31:03.00] That's a huge range of decisions. But I can say that, when you're communicating with someone else, say, in a handwritten note or a hand design page, you want to think about the reader as well as expressing who you are. And this used to be bound very tightly by etiquette. A lady would not use a certain color of ink when she was writing a impersonal note.
[00:31:38.89] There was a color of stationery for a good 50 years called Lincoln Blue, because Abraham Lincoln had used it in the White House. And people felt so strongly about him that they wanted to follow that lead. Think about writing to somebody with green or purple ink. Even in this age of very free communication, you'd stop and think, now wait a minute, how seriously do I want to be taken.
[00:32:13.86] I will not write to you in purple.
[00:32:15.27] Right. And red ink has its own messages to mean, you're spending too much money. Or it used to mean, this day in the calendar belongs to this Saint that's what a red letter day is. It's a saint's day in the list of the year. There are a lot traditional, but then also a lot of gut level reactions to color.
[00:32:45.58] Absolutely. Do you want to add to that?
[00:32:48.31] I actually just wanted to ask you a question. I know that blacks are not just blacks. There's a whole range of subtlety inside that. And could you just talk a little bit about black ink because there's a lot of color in that?
[00:33:02.40] Yeah, there are two main kinds of black ink in Western calligraphy-- the kind you use on parchment and then the kind you use on paper. Parchment ink has to have iron and what's called Oak gall in it because parchment is slightly oily. It's made from skin and it never quite loses that. So it has to bite into the surface in order not to beat up and eventually just flake off.
[00:33:39.19] If you write with that ink on paper, it will still bite in and it'll bite right through. And eventually, you'll have a hole where you wanted to have a letter on the paper. Paper is better with sepia ink, which I'm sure you know is made from some cephalopods or squid. And when it fades, it has a brown tone. But those are the two main kinds of black. Then 20th century, all bets are off. It's acrylic. It's got all other kinds of ingredients. But those two you can usually tell, to answer the question.
[00:34:24.39] No, that's great. [INAUDIBLE]
[00:34:25.49] That's so fascinating.
[00:34:26.10] Yeah, OK.
[00:34:27.00] Absolutely.
[00:34:29.55] I think we've done some really good table setting here to tackle the question of all questions, which this book is approaching. What do we really lose if one of your art forms goes away? I'd like to hear from each of you about your own practice or more generally. And maybe Josh and Meredith, we can start with you. If painting signs by hand goes away and everything goes to vinyl printing, which has happened in this industry-- so you've had some ups and downs. Do you want to give us a little sense of that history and where you see things?
[00:35:08.37] Well, as far as I know-- and again, I'm more of a 18th -centurist. But as far as I know from just people who are in the field that have lived through the vinyl takeover, I think it was probably around the '70s-- late '70s, '80s-- when vinyl technology started really taking hold and you could have no experience, no training, no knowledge of design, no anything. You could just buy one of these machines, open a sign shop, and produce more for less.
[00:35:55.56] And a lot of people who had been sign painters for decades were either put out of business or had to adapt. some of them just kept doing what they're doing and were either lucky or innovative enough or pulled through or did both or also bought a vinyl machine and incorporated that into their practice.
[00:36:27.24] So that happened in basically the '80s and '90s, were not as hand painted. The sign industry was not as hand painted as it was before. And then in the last-- I don't know. What would you say? 15 years or so, there's been a great resurgence. It's kind of ironic that it was really technology that brought back the resurgence of the hand painted signs because the internet really brought a lot of people together and brought a lot of older sign painters together with younger sign painters. And there was a lot of learning that happened.
[00:37:16.03] They look great on Instagram, too.
[00:37:18.00] Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:19.10] Colorful.
[00:37:20.06] Yeah, so there's been a great resurgence in the definitely the last decade. I mean, we can see what-- I mean, it's basically exactly the premise of your book, that it was almost lost and it's been really revived in the last-- I don't know-- 10 or 15 years depending on who you're asking.
[00:37:43.72] And you guys have been busier than ever before, right? You're getting all kinds of gigs and projects. And so it's definitely something that people are still valuing, which is amazing.
[00:37:55.71] Yeah, I mean, this is what we often say. But people do find the beauty and in this hand-- I think we're all going to see the same thing. But people do see the beauty in the handmade object and that beauty and the flaw of that object and what makes that unique and special and so human compared to something that is almost perfect, which something that was created by a computer and made by a computer or a machine.
[00:38:33.41] And that's not to say that we don't think that the machines serve a purpose or have a purpose. But I think, when you can take a moment to enjoy something hand created and the oddities of it that stand out I think are what are so fascinating and interesting sometimes-- so I mean, with Boston becoming every single building is-- just one down the street here-- being torn down and who knows what's going to come back up?
[00:39:10.38] But the problem that we find is that and a lot of people, I'm sure, find is that, when it does come back up, it doesn't look much different than what it probably did on the computer screen when they were designing it. So it's a little bit lifeless in that way. And we miss some of those flaws that are unique to handmade objects.
[00:39:35.70] Yeah, absolutely. And Narayan, we were looking at all these different labels in the Forbes Pigment Collection. It just shows this tremendous color history and the way that certain colors have come in and out of-- fashion technologies come and go for various reasons. But what's your take on this question?
[00:39:52.94] So what I think is that the scientist who work in museums help us discover what was lost and what we didn't know. So there are colors, like lead-tin-yellow that were disappeared in about 1750 and was rediscovered in 1940. And so for hundreds of years, people didn't know what they were missing. And then it became apparent.
[00:40:16.90] And so now you look at older paintings, and you go, that's lead-tin-yellow, that very, very bright yellow beading around here. It's what it was. And we didn't know that. Another example is lead-tin-antimony yellow. And if you look at Orazio's Gentileschi's painting of The Lute Player in the National Gallery in Washington, the figure is wearing this bright yellow dress. And we didn't know what it was until 1997 when two of my colleagues rediscovered this pigment.
[00:40:47.40] And so now we know and we can say, oh, that slightly browny yellow color is that pigment. And it really gives meaning to what's going on. And these pigments that were used by artists keep on getting rediscovered. So vivianite, which grows around the bones, is a purple pigment. It's was rediscovered by Marika Spring not that long ago, maybe 10 or 15 years ago and metallic bismuth. It's this weird looking, shiny paint. Nobody quite knew what it was.
[00:41:18.42] And then Marika was able to work out what it was. And so now we have this understanding of these artists who are experimenting and trying out new things, that sort of worked but have been forgotten about. And so we're rediscovering and rehonoring what artists were doing. And we just keep on doing that.
[00:41:36.99] So what we have is artists who are trying out stuff, gets forgotten about. And now we're able to bring it back. And it is rediscovering lost pigments. And it's an important part of understanding the evolution of how we got to where we are now.
[00:41:54.40] Yeah, and I think the collection, the work that you do, it all keeps telling those stories and keeps us talking about it and wanting to learn more. Before we open up for audience questions, I want to hear from Margaret, because we were talking a lot before this event about just how sad it is that just the act of handwriting a note to one another has gone so far away. But your mission is to make sure that doesn't happen.
[00:42:23.94] Well, I'll answer that in two pieces. One is that I don't think calligraphy is going away. If it was going to, it would be far gone because there are so many substitutes for it. But people love how it looks and they love to do it themselves.
[00:42:44.61] Handwriting is another item. And yet I would say this is one of the most irresistible pieces of paper with ink on it-- a note in your mail handwritten by somebody whose handwriting you recognize. And I always call it a gift wrapped communication. There's that moment of anticipation when you think, oh, I wonder what she's going to say. And I always like to point out, the only other ink on paper that really makes people sit up is US currency. But I can't say that anymore soon.
[00:43:36.92] But I want to point out that, if you give a donation to the Peabody Museum, you will most likely get a handwritten note from the development officer. They know which side their bread is buttered on. You will get handwritten notes from a lot of organizations that you work for or donate to. There is still a lot of room for people to say thank you, to say I'm sorry, to say I sympathize, to say congratulations. You don't have to buy a $40 bouquet of roses or a $25 bottle of wine. This is the best show of friendship that you can give anybody.
[00:44:30.45] And I think people are hanging on to that. Every year they say, oh, it's a dying art. It's a lost art.
[00:44:37.60] Almost.
[00:44:38.37] My publisher just reprinted a book of mine called The Art of the Handwritten Note. They issued a fresh new design with a new introduction because they see that, 20 years after it first came out and everybody said, oh, that's a dying art, it's still here.
[00:44:59.16] It's still here
[00:44:59.37] And it's still communicates.
[00:45:02.08] That's beautiful. Thank you so much.
[00:45:04.08] I just want to put in my word as well. I've been writing to a friend in Melbourne for 30 years now, hand writing. And we write a couple of times a month. And it's an amazing experience, sitting down writing. And it slows you down. It's not like that hunt and peck on a keyboard. You're actually writing something. And it forces you to think what you're about to say. And it's a pleasure mailing it, and it's a pleasure knowing that something's coming as well. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
[00:45:38.36] I'm so glad to hear that. I always say that stroking is a better way to put ink on the paper than pounding.
[00:45:49.49] Final thoughts from anybody before we turn it over to audience questions? No? Yeah, any questions from the audience that I can take? We have some mics over here. Question down here. Hello.
[00:46:09.22] Thank you. I'd like to ask if there is a particular work of art in your fields that you came across, each of you, that inspired you or you thought was particularly noteworthy-- so from another artist or a particular piece of chemistry or pigment that intrigued you, a story from your field.
[00:46:37.75] So I'm going to say that every time I begin examining a work of art I leave having greater respect for that artist, even if it's someone who I didn't necessarily care for to start with. I end up leaving going that person really knew what they were doing. They weren't doing this by accident. They were talented. They were making really deliberate choices. And now I understand what those choices are. So if you ask me if there's one, I'll say, no. I'll say, it's every time.
[00:47:08.26] Meredith or Josh?
[00:47:10.53] For me, it was William Hogarth's Beer Street. William Hogarth was an 18th century engraver and illustrator. And he did drawings of contemporary city life in London. And this one in particular-- I keep wanting to say painting. It's not a painting. It's an engraving. He features a sign painter.
[00:47:37.53] And when I first saw that, it kicked off my whole historical sign interest. The sign painter in the painting is-- well, I keep saying painting. It's an engraving. The scene, it's a companion piece with another engraving called Gin Alley or Gin Lane. And it's about how gin is really bad and beer is better.
[00:48:07.86] So gin has all these horrible things. There's like babies falling out of their mother's arms and people getting killed and all sorts of bad stuff happening. And then beer street is this image of like abundance and happiness and stuff. But the sign painter in Beer Street, he's painting a gin bottle. And he is all ragged. His clothes are all torn up. And so it led me to question why he was depicted in that way. And then that just was the rabbit hole that led me down the path of researching signs from the 18th century.
[00:48:50.22] For me, I think it was-- when I was younger, I was really interested in pop art, and particularly James Rosenquist, who was a sign painter before was famous in New York painting billboards, and how that played into how he depicted his later paintings and how he told a story about how, when he'd be painting these large billboards in New York City, above Times Square, that, on a swing stage or a scaffolding, you can only get so far from a painting.
[00:49:28.70] And so when you are looking at what is an advertisement from far away, it looks like more of an abstract piece of art up close. And I just thought that was really interesting. I was drawn to that from early age. And I also like Andy Warhol, that whole art derived from commercial art. And so I think that's what captured me early on. And I'm still very interested in early commercial art and those very hard edged and really line oriented artworks. So, yeah.
[00:50:07.42] And speaking of handwritten notes, I just heard this the other day, that the billboard painters would leave little messages for each other because, whoever would come in next, they'd have to paint it out white and repaint the whole thing. So I just heard that just the other day. But that's really interesting.
[00:50:26.01] That's really cool. I'm going to find a way to put that in a book.
[00:50:28.87] Yes, I'll try to find where I saw that.
[00:50:31.73] Cite your source. Again, I'm going to split this into two. One would be in studying and writing about Chinese calligraphy and Japanese calligraphy. I discovered there's a whole subgenre where you just with a brush make a circle. And I devoted a whole page to it in one of my books. And there was one guy who made circles on bedsheets hanging on the wall so that he would throw the ink to make the circle. And then some people will just do it as meditation. And I've got several of those I treasure.
[00:51:16.04] The other thing is-- and I think you can all identify with this-- for handwriting, now and then I come across in my files a letter from my mother, who's been gone 30 years now. And it's still-- it gives me that same thrill of the morning mail, which is, oh, look at that. She's right here.
[00:51:40.60] And so I think, when people truly accept that it's a way of making yourself present long after you're gone, it might inspire them to do a little more writing on paper. And I mean, you now with your friend have a treasure trove that really-- I mean, it would make a great book.
[00:52:08.16] Do you want to take that one?
[00:52:10.78] Giotto also, the Italian painter, drew a circle and won an art competition for doing that. So there's no end of these-- the circle is such a powerful, powerful statement.
[00:52:23.63] Narayana, do you have a favorite art piece that--
[00:52:27.56] I really think whatever I'm working on at that time is what I care most about.
[00:52:35.32] I feel that too.
[00:52:37.72] So like when I was working on the Rothko murals for the opening of the art museums, I was so passionate about Mark Rothko at that moment. And at the moment, I've spent a lot of time looking at Philip III of Spain painted by Pantoja de La Cruz. And that's from 1605, and I'm really passionate about that. So these projects bring me into a whole other world. And so I just immerse myself in that. And I love it.
[00:53:05.50] But I wanted to ask the sign-- Ed Ruscha is another person who comes to mind. And I don't know-- he paints and paints letters and invents his own font and everything. I mean, is that someone who you're aware of?
[00:53:18.97] Absolutely, that's one of the artists that I was really drawn to early on, especially that standard, mobile painting with just those hard lines, just a very graphic nature of it. Because I think that the sign painting is something that is very graphic and I think-- so, yes, definitely. And he wrote a forward not too long ago. There's a book called sign painters that came out years ago. And that I think helped also to spark some of this resurgence. But he wrote the foreword for that book, which is cool.
[00:53:58.94] I could keep talking about artists all day. I want to make sure that we can answer a few questions. Anybody else?
[00:54:05.16] Emily.
[00:54:05.74] Yes?
[00:54:06.01] What is your favorite work of art.
[00:54:09.57] I'm the Narayan camp, where it's really hard to choose at any given time. But I'm a very big Duchamp fan. So I need to make it out to see more Duchamp in person. But learning about The Large Glass as an undergrad was pretty impactful for me. It's a very complicated piece. And I love the idea that he just had this joke that he wasn't telling anyone the punch line to for all of his work. It just keeps me endlessly fascinated as a researcher. Question, yes. Go ahead.
[00:54:42.22] Yeah, Margaret, Is this on? In Western calligraphy, fonts can evoke a period. Like, the Gothic font will evoke medieval Germany. And you get the old West funds that evoke the gunslingers in Arizona, in 1890s. Is that also true in an oriental calligraphy? Do you get the same? Is there an evolution of the writing that evokes a period?
[00:55:24.04] I'm not an expert enough-- I'm not-- there are several self consciously archaic almost primitive scripts in Chinese and Japanese called Oracle bone scripts that are made. We would call them runes. They're made with straight lines that look like they've been scratched into the surface of a stone or bone. I don't know enough to know what that means to a person from that country who looks at it. Sorry.
[00:56:10.81] I'll take the next question. Thank you so much.
[00:56:17.32] I have a question I don't know if anyone can answer-- about something I was thinking about a few days ago actually-- about the semiotics of signs and color. I've just always been curious. I mean, there are colors that we see all the time-- red, green, and blue-- sorry, red, green, and yellow for the stoplights, and also things like yield signs and caution things being yellow or bright orange.
[00:56:41.96] And I'm just curious, when did all of that start, that it would be universal that people would know red is stop and green is go and yellow means be careful or in those related colors.
[00:56:54.40] Yeah, I don't know if I'll be able to answer that either because it's outside of my kind of-- I mean, there's a whole field of way finding signs, and there's probably sciences behind all of those choices that are just outside definitely my realm of interest and that kind of thing. Sometimes it gets a little-- sign codes and all of that kind of stuff gets a bit too technical for me to research.
[00:57:34.80] It's a very good question.
[00:57:35.23] But it's a great question, yeah. And I'm there is an answer that I'm sure it has to do with whatever research they've done on how people react to different colors. But yeah, it's beyond my scope of research.
[00:57:53.88] There may possibly be someone--
[00:57:57.07] I was going to say that there are people who have tried to assign emotions and responses to very specific colors. Like, the Blue Rider school, Kandinsky and Fran Marc, tried to assign emotions to colors, but they ended up with their own specific codes. And they didn't correlate at all.
[00:58:19.65] I seem to remember that with stoplights and that kind of stuff with street signs that it started to evolve and there wasn't a single code at first. And then it slowly started to evolve, and there'd be things like semaphore signals that would come out with words written on them. And so this idea of stop and go is something that evolved and became codified. But I don't know exactly how that happened.
[00:58:48.94] I saw a great episode of Top Gear, where one of the people interviewed the woman who invented all the motorway signs that you see in England. And she's still around. And she is able to talk in a very articulate way about all the decision making that went into the font, the arrows, the color, all of that stuff. So that happened by the government saying, we need this for the motorways.
[00:59:18.74] And so that's how we got there at a certain point. And I don't want to say which year it was. But it happened, and I suspect that there are stories like that about street lights, about the font that's used for street signs, all of those things that I think government initiatives are probably to blame for all of it.
[00:59:40.63] Yeah, but you don't think their colors are-- like, you were talking about the purple being royal and those kind of things. You don't think there isn't any kind of historical association between green and go and red and stop that you know of?
[00:59:58.46] I don't know anything.
[01:00:00.33] There may be someone typing right now on the live feed that will answer that question.
[01:00:07.50] I love that question, though. And Meredith, you were talking about the time before literacy was commonplace. So signs needed to be as simple and easy to understand as possible. And I'm sure that would include color. I'm just making an inference.
[01:00:22.71] Yeah, and as far as I know from my research of that era, things like that came about as they were needed. Like, the numbering system started becoming implemented around the same time that the pictorial signs were coming down and lettered signs were being put up. And that happened as the signs were going out of disrepair or as they were actually in London falling down and killing people.
[01:01:05.95] And so the city had an ordinance where the projecting signs had to be replaced with signs affixed to the front of the buildings and things like that. As far as I know from that era, sign ordinances happened as things led to them. And I don't know of any kind of meeting or anything where anybody sat down and decided, we're going to redo everything or come up with these colors that are going to represent these things. I've never come across anything like that, but also I haven't gotten into the nitty gritty of sign codes and things like that.
[01:01:49.91] More stories to uncover. Diana, do we have time for one more question do you think? No? We've got to wrap it up? One more. One more? Yeah, let's do it. One more, down here. Great.
[01:02:00.86] Wait for a mic. We've got to make for you right there at your shoulder.
[01:02:04.35] I'm not good with these. Could any of you talk more about the meditation impact of slow, deliberate practices, the ways in which you can get surprised into stillness by your own process? I'm thinking of once, when I was in the scriptorium at Mont-Saint-Michel and the absolutely pervasive stillness of that place-- just it infused the atmosphere even hundreds of years later.
[01:02:43.16] When I'm painting signs, it's really the only time my mind ever stops. It's the only time that I'm not constantly thinking. And when we're painting-- because I specifically mostly work on large scale on site murals. And so we'll often be on ladders. And I've been talking recently about how it's almost like yoga in the sense that-- because it's not just my hand painting. It's my other hand holding the cup, which is very easy to-- your brush stroke is going like this and your paint cup goes with it.
[01:03:29.46] So you have to be aware-- even though you're not actually using it, you're not focusing, your brain isn't focusing on it, you have to be aware of the cup in your hand. You have to be aware of your body standing on the ladder, balancing on the ladder. And you have to focus on painting whatever you're painting in front of you. So it is a very meditative and whole body experience for me when I'm doing that kind of work.
[01:03:57.59] Margaret.
[01:03:58.31] I would support that--
[01:04:01.22] Speak into the mic.
[01:04:01.79] Very similar to the experience of sitting in a chair, holding still, stopping talking, stopping listen--
[01:04:07.75] Mic, your mic.
[01:04:09.02] --and just focusing on the ink that's coming out of the pen. There's a saying an old [? scriptorium, ?] the hand writes but the whole body hurts because-- I'm sorry. The whole body hurts because just holding still is the hardest exercise there is. And I think everybody who works with lettering or has to hold still goes through a period of some months when they go full time and they just ache all over.
[01:04:48.06] I have a similar experience too. Part of my job is taking minute samples from works of art. And I have to focus, and everything has to be exactly right. I have to be in it in the zone. If I'm thinking about anything else other than what is directly in front of me, it just doesn't work. So I have to empty my brain and be focused on what I'm seeing down the microscope, tip of a scalpel, and that's it. Nothing else matters.
[01:05:19.46] I have found enough, a similar thing with me, especially working on gold leaf or something really delicate in timing out your heartbeats and your rhythm of your heart. But I have found that listening to heavy metal helps for some reason. I don't know why.
[01:05:38.07] Well, well gold leaf is a very specifically delicate material for sign painting because the leaf itself is very, very, very thin. I don't know how many millimeters-- but very, very thin. And so your breath can affect it as well as all sorts of other things in the environment.
[01:06:02.75] [It's maybe that push and pull you need.
[01:06:04.64] And gold is a heavy metal. It is.
[01:06:07.85] There you go.
[01:06:08.15] That's the perfect note to end this on, I think. That's perfect. Thank you, everybody.