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“CALLIGRAPHY—A
MEANS TO VARIOUS ENDS”
Charles
E. Skaggs
Rochester,
New York: The Committee for Italic Handwriting Newsletter, spring
& summer 1961
Charles
Skaggs’ article appeared in this newsletter sponsored by Rochester
Institute of Technology. He asserted that “improved everyday handwriting
is one of the objectives of the study of calligraphy.” He also argued
that calligraphy is often regarded as the “study of archaic forms”
but that at least “token study of the history and style of those
twenty six purely abstract characters we call our alphabet” is necessary
to supplement the study of drawing, lettering, typography, and design
in general.
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Skaggs
also received some correspondence from those involved in the production
of the RIT Newsletter, thanking him for his contribution:
autograph note from Alfred A. Horton [1961] (below) and autograph
letter from Fred Eager, August 27, 1960 (right). Not surprisingly,
they are written in calligraphic hands.
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RAYMOND
F. DABOLL
Autograph
letter, signed. April 12, 1961
This
is one of several responses to Charles Skaggs’ article in the RIT
Newsletter from friends and fellow calligraphers. DaBoll and
Skaggs knew each other starting in the 1940s, and there are numerous
letters from DaBoll in the Skaggs Collection. Here he congratulates
Skaggs for the RIT article: “You’ve done as much as any one I know
of to dispel the too prevalent notion that calligraphy is just an
‘artsty-craftsy’ avocational sideline.”
Also
shown here is an ornamented envelope from DaBoll to Skaggs from
1968.
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| RAYMOND
F. DABOLL, 1892-1981
"Forsaking
Rochester’s Athenaeum for Chicago’s Art Institute in 1914, Ray
DaBoll was to become the Midwest’s laureate of letters. Early
years of study with Fred Goudy and an apprenticeship with Oswald
Cooper fostered a career that helped to pioneer the growth of
calligraphy in America’s heartland. DaBoll’s natural gift for
honest, unaffected letters reached its ultimate expression after
exposure to the Newberry calligraphy study group. Thereafter,
calligraphy was his all-consuming addiction, as he gave up his
more commercial work in favor of books, tracts, insatiable study,
and voluminous correspondence. His italic, lacking the polish
or classicism of many Easterners, was written with directness
and apparent independence from established models. And yet the
result was as attractive and well suited to its subject as that
written by any court scribe of the sixteenth century … DaBoll’s
most characteristic specialty was a limitless variety of decorative
initials. These creations, unlike any in copybook manuals, sprang
straight from Mid-western grassroots—as did his familiar RFD monogram
on a rural mailbox."
--Charles
Skaggs
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