The English writing masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, wrote with an edged quill, producing the script known as “English Roundhand”, hence the name on Mitchell’s square-edged nibs, to this day.
The following extracts are from “Penmanship made easy” by George Bickham (calligrapher & engraver) London 1733.
“Make all your body strokes with the full & all hair strokes with the corner of your pen”.
“Make the nib of your pen for the Round & Round-Text and the breadth of the full stroke and that part lying next ye hand something shorter and narrower”.
In other words, in the downstroke of the small letter “t” for example, the stroke was even from top to bottom, determined by the width of the edged nib, until narrowing at the foot when the nib was turned upwards onto the left corner to form the hairline stroke.
For the production of copy books for teaching writing, the writing masters passed their work to engravers who were able, with the engraving burin, to clean up any irregularities. These engraved “Copper plates” were used to produce the copy books which showed lettering which had been drawn (by the engraver) and not handwritten.
In a sense, Bickham’s instructions, as above, were rather unfair, as they applied to the method of his original hand lettering which he had subsequently engraved in preparation for printing. These instructions do not apply to his improved, engraved lettering which appeared in the printed copy book!
With an edged pen, it would have been extremely difficult to replicate the twists and turns and accuracy of the engraver’s work, so sharpened, pointed quills were developed in an attempt to emulate the swelled strokes of the burin, opening the tines under control by applying varying degrees of pressure to downstrokes.
As they were more consistent and durable, metal nibs were developed and are still used to this day. The handwritten lettering thus produced, has become known as “Copperplate” in reference to its origin, but strictly speaking, it is handwriting based on the engraver’s copy of original English Roundhand text.
This is esentially different from the version known as Engraver’s or Engrosser’s script, as exemplified by Dr Vitolo on the Zanerian site. Using the same flexible, pointed nibs, his drawn lettering is very beautiful and is probably as close as possible to the original engraved exemplars of the past.