The Triangle Cancellations of Ireland (original) (raw)
Typ.ologies: Reframing Ireland's vernacular letterform through the lens of heritage
InfoDesign - Brazilian Journal of Information Design, 2023
Since the late 1800s, vernacular letterforms have been vital components of the traditional shopfronts of Ireland, enlivening, place-making, and inspiring dialogue with streetscapes. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage identifies, records, and evaluates Ireland’s post-1700 architectural heritage. While the state initiative appraises architecturally significant shopfronts, it typically overlooks the critical signage element. This research aims to bridge this gap by documenting, mapping, and interpreting the existing vernacular letterforms in Kilkenny as a paradigm. Through the lens of heritage, the study seeks to construct a case for preserving, promoting, and advocating for vernacular letterforms and the traditional craft of signwriting. Signwriting straddles art, craft, and design dissolving creative hierarchies yet remains academically underexplored. Raising awareness and advancing the craft’s criticality may influence local and national policy. With the current economic climate threatening to permanently alter Ireland’s typographic landscapes, academic scrutiny of this rich graphic heritage has never been more crucial.
Neighbours on Paper: A Contribution to the History of Multiscript Printing in Colonial Cyprus
The Cyprus Review, 31(2), pp.207-228, 2019
In Cyprus the introduction of printing coincided with the beginning of the British occupation. Thereafter, all printed documents had to address a multilingual audience as English, Greek, and Ottoman Turkish were in use. This article focuses on a distinctive characteristic of the local printing history namely the practice of multiscript printing and the visual appearance of multilingual documents that addressed a linguistically multifarious society. For comparative reasons two different kinds of documents are examined: multilingual administrative documents and advertisements. The analysis of the documents provides insights into the practice of multiscript printing, i.e. the technical resources (printing methods and available types), the skills of printers, and the typographic conventions applied on multilingual documents. In conjunction with archival evidence these documents become mirrors of political convictions, social norms, and commercial transactions that linked a peripheral printing trade with the European centres.
Discussion of the use of architecture on British postage stamps to 2010. What was selected, what neglected. Discusses in detail a period of national iconographic promotion which was carefully contrived. Outlines possible new areas for illustration - many of which were taken up after 2010.
Foreign Influences in Irish Manuscript Decoration
An age-old cultural equivalence exists between the standard elements of Irish manuscripts (interlace, illuminated letters, animal decorum, dotting) and Irish-ness itself. While purists and nationalists might use a number of codices as proof of their intellectually and artistically fruitful past, it is also of paramount importance to be able to recognize the various foreign influences that have been adopted and personalized by an array of cosmopolite scribes and painters of the middle ages. It becomes clear by merely observing certain carpet pages or representations of Biblical scenes that the aesthetic enrapture they convey would not have been as potent throughout the years had it not been the product of a fascinating cultural mélange. The current paper aims to offer an insightful overview of Irish aestheticism and to deconstruct the false equivalent that labels certain compositional elements as typically Irish.
An Investigation of a Printer's Block (Manchester, John Rylands Library, 17252)
Perspectives Médiévales: Revue d'épistémologie des langues et littératures du Moyen Âge, 2020
Conservé au Royaume-Uni, à la John Rylands Library de Manchester (cote 17252), le bloc d’imprimerie xylographique que nous étudions dans cet article est de datation incertaine. Pour certains il remonterait au xve siècle et il serait par conséquent le plus ancien outil d’imprimeur en bois que nous conservions. Pour d’autres il aurait été fabriqué siècle xviiie et imiterait l’iconographie médiévale. Faute d’investigations scientifiques plus poussées, la date exacte du bloc de bois ne peut pas être établie. Notre article envisage donc les deux hypothèses de datation au regard la tradition iconographique (l’image gravée sur ce bloc représente une scène de la vie de saint Jean largement inspirée des Apocalypses figurées des xiiie et xive siècles) et de nos connaissances sur l’histoire de ce bloc. Nous examinons ainsi le statut cet objet selon qu’il est un authentique artefact du siècle xve siècle , ou selon qu’il est une imitation du xviiie siècle. Housed in the United Kingdom, at the John Rylands Library in Manchester (item number 17252), the xylographic printing block that we study in this article has an uncertain date. Some scholars believe that it dates to the fifteenth century and that it is, consequently, the oldest extant woodblock printing apparatus. Other scholars believe that it was made in the eighteenth century and it imitates the medieval iconography. Lacking more scientific investigations, the exact date of the woodblock cannot be established. Our article investigates both possibilities of dating in regard to the iconographic tradition (the carved image on the block represents a scene from the life of St. John, largely inspired by the illustrated Apocalypses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) and of our understanding of the block. We examine, therefore, the status of the block as an object that is an authentic fifteenth-century object and as an eighteenth-century imitation.
A Geometrical Approach to Letter Design: Renaissance and Modernism
A geometrical approach to letter design has almost always been a marginal phenomenon, and its development has never been smooth. However, in the history of letterforms, there were periods when this approach engaged in competition with the established tradition of shaping letters according to calligraphic writing. These sudden influxes of interest in geometrical letter design seem to have never been explored in their relationship, although with further study it is evident that they have common origins and sources. This thesis aims to draw a line between the letterforms from two periods when geometry became a dominant concept: the Renaissance and Modernism. These periods are separated by almost half a millennium, and the letterforms from these periods are therefore so distant from each other, that, actually, do not invite to a comparison. That is why the first part of the work is written in a defensive tone and stands as a preventive reply to those statements, which might be put forward to contest the sustainability of this thesis. The second part provides arguments in support of the hypothesis. It discusses causes that might have facilitated the rapid progress of the geometrical approach, and consequences that manifested themselves in the characteristic features of the letterforms and principles of their construction. The interest in geometry within typographic practice is put into the socio–historical context of both epochs, and is treated as strongly dependent on it.
Shedding Paper Snakes - Correspondence, Mail Art and the 70s NET.pdf
This essay by Chuck Welch, has been published in the current exhibition catalogue, Keep Art Flat! Mail Art and the Political 1970s, Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Denmark, 15 September - 06 November 2016. Welch, a mail art networker, writer, and curator wrote the essay as a survey of mail art objectives and networking during the 1970s. The text has been illustrated with artworks by Niels Lomholt, Robert Rehfeldt, Bill Vazan, Istvan Kantor and Guglielmo Achille Cavellini. All works are found in the Niels Lomholt Mail Art Archive, Denmark. Text is in English.