The presenter team took it upon themselves to put together a presentation to tell the story of Arabic calligraphy for the American audience who were interested in this beautiful form of Middle Eastern Art. The presentation covered a brief linguistic history of Arabic script and development of the Kufic Style, followed by an introduction to Square Kufic, Maghribi, Thuluth, Naskh, Muhaqqaq, Rayhan, Ruq’a, Divani, Nasta’liq and Shekasta Nasta’liq. The presentation offered a glimpse at various calligraphy rules for Arabic script and the audiences were pleased to see sample slides showcasing each style and its application.
The next segment of the presentation covered the contemporary art and typography movement set by KHTT Foundation, DecoType, LinoType and a number of independent Arabic type designers. Artworks by Juliet Breton, Wissam Shawkat, Hassan Masoudi, Khalid Shahin, Ibrahim Al-Arrafi, Shukor Yahya, Mohammad Ehsaei, Farhad Moshiri and Bijan Seyfouri were displayed in this section. Beautiful slides from Istanbul brought joy to the eyes of the audience and the presentation came to an end with a short hands-on introduction to basic calligraphy tools.
Payman Hamed, from PersianCalligraphy.org, conducted the workshop where participants got the chance to practice writing a few words in Nasta’liq style. The room was charged with fun and creativity once the participants began to engage in right-to-left writing! It was very impressive to see beautiful curves drawn by art-lovers who were doing Arabic-Persian calligraphy for the first time.
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Resources and Credits:
www.arabiccalligraphysupplies.com / www.calligraphyqalam.com / Chester Beatty Library (Book: Islam, Faith, Art and Culture by Elaine Wright) / DecoType / Dr. Mamoun Sakkal / Khalili Family Trust, Islamic Collection / KHTT Foundation /
LinoType Gmbh / United States Library of Congress / Bijan Seyfouri / Cynthia Douglass / Elisabeth Kvernen / Farhad Moshiri / Habibollah Fazaeli (Book: Ta'lime Khat) / Hassan Masoudi / Ibrahim Al-Arrafi / Josh Berer / Julien Breton / Khalid Shaahin / Mirjam Somers / Mohammad Ehsaei / Mohammad Reza Jalili / Mourad Boutros (Book: Arabic for Designers) / Mustafa Ja'far (Book: Arabic Calligraphy, Naskh script for beginners) / Nadine Chahin / Peter Bilak / Rana Abou Rjeily / Tarek Atrissi / Thomas Milo / Wissam Shawkat / Nasta'liq type by: WinSoft Tasmeem
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Links:
www.arabic-typography.com / www.persiantypography.com / www.persiancalligraphy.org
