Several weeks ago I stumbled on a calligraphy site, which I foolishly forgot to bookmark (if I find it again, I will bookmark it, and add a link in a post so you can find it too). Anyway, as I wandered around the site (I’m a lurker), I was intrigued by a post called ‘My Favorite Tool’.
Calligraphers were asked to tell others about a favorite tool, and there were many responses, some of them quite out of the ordinary. It was a fun read, and it caused me to think about what my favorite calligraphy tool might be.
Most calligraphers are also avid collectors of ‘tools of the trade’ and I am no exception. I poke around in boxes of junk at yard sales and estate sales hoping for a ‘find’. I collect antique tools and ink bottles and kits that I have no intention of ever using, just because I enjoy owning something another calligrapher used and enjoyed. I once scored a complete set of automatic pens at a yard sale, and they quickly became some of my favorites for larger works.
I’m always on the lookout for a new product or tool. When I discovered Pilot Parallel Pens at a calligraphy conference years ago, I was smitten and happily paid up for the whole set. They’re great fun, and very useful in certain applications, but I couldn’t say they are my favorite tools.
I have an artist friend whose favorite tool is a broken bamboo skewer, and she makes wonderful calligraphic marks on her paintings with this tool. She also favors interesting twigs she finds on the ground for the same purpose. Needless to say, she’s a wildly creative person. And that leads me to the point of this post - namely the source of all this creativity.
I guess if I were asked, I would have to say my favorite tool is my brain. It goes with me wherever I go, and it hardly ever fails me (except, of course, when I forget to bookmark an important site).
Even when I’m not working, it continues to work for me, helping me with the creative end of calligraphy, so when I do pick up a pen, I often find that most of the design work has already been done, and some of the problems have already been solved.
Do you have a favorite calligraphy tool? I’d love to hear about it, and share it with other calligraphers.