#rustic capitals

[deer-knight]

calligraphy sample of rustic capitals, a cousin hand to the imperial roman capitals. 

this was my first time using this hand for a scroll, so i was quite nervous to accept the assignment, but i think it came out okay.

done for a roman scroll i’ll post more of later.

[image description: two close-up photos of lines of calligraphy in the style of rustic capitals. end image description.]

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

ROMAN SQUARE AND RUSTIC CAPITALS

Last week we discussed the relationship between uncial scripts and the Carolingian miniscule (the letterforms that most typefaces, and our own handwriting, are modelled on). In that post we noted that uncial scripts seem to be derived from the late imperial Rustic Capitals, which themselves were based on Roman epigraphic letter forms or Square Capitals. Today we examine those earlier letterforms.

Roman square capitals, from which we derive our own modern capital letters, were used to create epigraphic inscriptions, as shown in the top photographic images of letters from the pediment of the Column of Trajan (113 CE). These forms are upright, with thin and thick strokes and incised serifs. American calligrapher, type designer, and stone cutter Edward M. Catich made a careful study of the letters in the Column of Trajan and deduced that the serifs in these square capitals do not derive from the use of chisel in stone, as is commonly understood, but rather from the flat brush stokes used when writing Roman letter forms on the columns for the chisel to follow (view our earlier post on Catich’s study of the Trajan inscription).

Manuscript forms of these epigraphic letters were sometimes used in very formal textual presentations, such as in the Vergilius Augusteus (4th century CE), shown here just below the Trajan inscriptions. More common, however, were the less rigid and more scribal Rustic Capitals, which tend to have a more informal quality with letters that are thinner and more curved and compact, as displayed in the last two images from the Vergilius Vaticanus (ca. 400 CE). It is believed that the even-more rounded uncial scripts, that ultimately led to the Carolingian miniscule, derive from rustic capitals.

The Trajan capitals shown here are from our copy of Edward Catich’s Letters Redrawn from the Trajan Inscription in Rome, published in Davenport, Iowa, by his own Catfish Press in 1961. Images of the Vergilius Vaticanus are from our copy of Die Miniaturen des Vergilius Vaticanus by Johannes de Wit, published in Amsterdam by Swets & Zeitlinger in 1959. The image of text from  the Vergilius Augusteus is borrowed from the Wikipedia article on that manuscript

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[storbajo]

• one of my favourites: Rustic Capitals •

[undttype]

Prize (2015), a typeface by Marcus Leis Allion based on Roman rustic capitals.