‘Modern calligraphy is about finding your unique style’

In the compact downstairs tea room at Twelve Coffee House on King’s Road in Clifton Village, the heads of a dozen women bow over a long wooden tabletop, covered in cups of coffee, delicate carnations in vintage tea cups, slices of cake and name tags in perfect sparkly pink calligraphy.

Concentrating hard, the group pores over lined pieces of paper, slowly copying out swirling fonts on worksheets that workshop leader Rosie Somerset has painstakingly created, taking total beginners through basic pen control, then all the letters of the alphabet, and finishing with whole words and phrases.

It’s rare that you feel like you’ve learned a skill in the space of a morning, but Rosie paces things perfectly, taking us from the first fumbling strokes of the brush-like nib on the paper to the final confident ones that are beginning to develop a personal style.

The workshop takes beginners from basic pen control to writing full phrases

“I’ve been doing calligraphy for about three years,” Rosie tells the assembled group, each seated in front of their materials including a high-quality brush calligraphy pen to take home. “I was living in Birmingham and went along to the Pen Museum – there’s so much in there!” she says with genuine enthusiasm.

“I tried out a calligraphy class, which was an old fashioned copperplate style – it made me think of monks writing on scrolls. It was quite strict, and there was a right way and a wrong way to do it. I enjoyed the process but I found it restrictive.”

However, inspired by the modern calligraphy she was seeing on Instragram and Pinterest, Rosie used the basic skills she’d learned from the class to practice at home. “It’s mind-blowing what some people do,” she says. “I had the basics of pen control so I self-taught until things felt right. I love the fact that with modern calligraphy it’s up to you how it looks: you’re finding your unique style.”

Workshops last 90 minutes, just long enough to learn the basics of the skill

A primary school teacher as a day job, Rosie has been running her intimate workshops for beginners for just over a year, first in Birmingham and now in Bristol. “It’s been working so well here – it’s such a creative city and people are so keen to try other things,” Rosie says.

Her workshop attendees this Tuesday morning range from artists and photographers to members of a bridal party who have been tasked with creating invitations and place settings for the wedding. Rosie floats around offering advice and suggesting everyone tries out some of her vast collection of pens, which appear from a gold case and litter the table in all colours of a pastel rainbow.

The workshop lasts just 90 minutes but Rosie is a skilful facilitator and at no point does the workshop feel rushed: she allows each participant to go at their own speed, encouraging them to finish the sheets at home or stay a little longer to coach them individually through tricky flourishes. “Part of this is really relaxing, and part of it is just rage!” laughs one participant.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj78xfMnyR1/?taken-by=rosie_somerset_lettering

The time flies past and Rosie is soon wrapping the workshop up and asking participants if they want her to write any specific words or phrases out on their extra sheets to practice at home. “Can I give you my entire guest list?” asks one member of the bridal party, only half joking. Across the table one talented woman has picked up the skill with ease and is writing whole sentences neatly between the guidelines, ready to have a go at creating a greetings card which Rosie has tucked in amongst the pack of paper at each place on the table.

“I’ve got a big list of things I want to do with these workshops, including finding venues that would host a workshop as a hen party,” Rosie says. “Lots of people sign up to my mailing list and say they want to come back, so I could run intermediate workshops or sessions for learning specific skills, like the watercolour floral designs I put on my cards.”

Rosie also runs dip-pen calligraphy workshops and has been offered a spot to teach classes at the drawing school at the RWA from February 2019, bringing her skills to an even wider audience. For this talented and entrepreneurial artist, the world is a blank page, ready to be made beautiful.

Rosie Somerset’s next calligraphy workshop takes place on August 27 at East Village Cafe and costs £26, including coffee and cake. Find out more about forthcoming workshops at www.rosiesomersetlettering.com