Welcome To
Calderdale Calligraphers

A Brief History Of Calderdale Calligraphers
 
     It all started when a small group of like minded people decided to place an article in the Evening Courier inviting anyone interested in calligraphy to meeting at Lightcliffe School.  About 35 people attended, and Calderdale Calligraphers was born. That was in 1989.  In the beginning our, now-President, Jim Winstanley, was the mainstay tutor and gradually other tutors have emerged from our own talented group.

    Calligraphy comes from the Greek and means beautiful writing.  Our society has been guiding its members to produce not just beautiful writing, but pieces of work that use the craft of writing to produce works of art.  We use many different scripts, some of which are very  traditional dating back to the early centuries AD, and so we go through the ages to modern times and very free expressive work.

Where we meet, when and what we do.

Our group meets on the first Saturday of each month at The Community Hall, St John’s Church, Rastrick. We are not all experts, but like many things you reap the rewards of the effort you put in.  Everyone is very supportive and we all take pleasure in what we achieve.  It’s good to have a show case for our work and we have exhibited at the Halifax Piece Hall and other venues, and in 2010, in Halifax Minster to coincide with the Halifax festival.

We have our own quarterly magazine, The Ascender, which gives all our news and notices of forthcoming events and details of the workshops. Some people who are not able to attend meetings but like to keep in touch are Ascender-only members.   There are also one or two weekend courses during the year, with outside tutors, when aspects such as gilding, writing on tissue papers…are on offer at extra cost.  On the day of the AGM we invite a well-known speaker to talk about their work with examples or slides to illustrate.

We also have a library of calligraphy books that members can borrow at 50p per book per month. This is open during the lunch break. Also open at lunchtime is the shop that stocks basic calligraphy materials sold at reasonable prices.