How big is calligraphy?

So you’re thinking of ordering a piece of handwritten calligraphy. You love the personal touch, the little quirks and flourishes that will make your calligraphy commission a really special gift for someone. You’ve checked out how much it costs and found a calligrapher in your area whose work you love. But you’re unsure how to ask this one last question: how big will your calligraphy artwork be? 

Perhaps you’re assuming whatever you’re asking your calligrapher for will be quite small. Greetings card size, or perhaps A4. But as a modern calligrapher with 20 years’ experience in writing all kinds of poems and bespoke calligraphy commissions, I’d like to offer you some advice: calligraphy is often going to end up larger than you expect.

It’s impossible to tell how big a piece of calligraphy is from a photo you find online. What size do you think this is? (The answer is at the very bottom of the page)

Examples of calligraphy conversations about size!

I was contacted in June to write a couple of bespoke calligraphy commissions. One was for a piece of lettering on A5 card. There were around 30 words, and my customer knew exactly what they wanted. I wrote the piece using a super fine Gillott 303 nib, and it worked well. The final piece had smooth, fine calligraphy and my customer was really pleased with the final result. However, I would have preferred to write this calligraphy on a piece of A4 paper to bring out the best in the letters, allow more sophisticated flourishing and a stronger contrast between the delicate hairlines and swooping, bolder calligraphy strokes.

romantic alternative calligraphy love letter UK

Another bespoke calligraphy commission I completed recently was for a repeat customer. David ordered a poem from me before he was married, and another three just this summer. We followed the same design brief with a gorgeous GFSmith Mist coloured paper and a subtle border illustration with 23 carat gold leaf. I looked carefully at the number of words in David’s poems and recommended a larger size for the pieces than he’d asked for. This was before I began any work or took payment for David’s calligraphy order of course!

Follow your calligrapher’s size recommendations and advice

As David was happy to follow my recommendation for increasing the size of his calligraphy commissions, I was able to produce pieces of artwork which made the very best of the handwritten lettering. Words were clear and crisp, with fine hairlines and freehand flourishes which complemented the overall look. Nothing was squeezed in; every detail worked well on A3 paper.

Can’t you just use a smaller calligraphy nib / pen?

I’m asked this a lot. Pointed pen calligraphy – which is the style I most often write – uses one of two kinds of nib. There’s the rough n ready, jack of all trades G nib – the one I include in my beginners calligraphy kits because it’s versatile, almost impossible to break, and deliciously easy to flourish with. I will sometimes use this for poem commissions and calligraphy family trees, depending how complex or bold the artwork needs to be.

The second size of calligraphy nib for fine detail work has three ‘hero’ nibs: the Gillott 303, Hunt 22B and Leonardt EF Principal. They’re all delicate and create the finest of hairlines, so they’re good for creating smaller letters. But calligraphy needs both a fine nib and delicate, precise hand movements. It takes years of practice to control a pen well enough to write tiny letters and to make them beautiful at the same time. The minimum size I’ll happily write is a 5mm letter (2.5mm bowl, 2.5mm ascender) – but this is reserved for fine family tree work.

Can you tell what size a piece of calligraphy will be?

It would be nice to be able to say, for example, that 50 words of calligraphy would fit on A4 paper and 100 words would suit A3. But it’s not that simple!

Poems will have lines of different lengths: some look long on the page, and some are wide. Some have gaps between the verses, and others flow with really long verses and fewer gaps.

Ideally, each line of a poem or other commission would be written at least 12mm high, and there’s plenty of spacing around the edges for me to flourish and create a design that’s well spaced and not squashed.

Because poems and song lyrics come in all shapes and sizes I need to be able to see your poem / wording before I can estimate the size of paper it will need to be written on. This is of course one of the very best bits of my job – discovering new poems and reading the words you’ve written for the special occasions in your life – so please: if you have a poem you’d like to have written in calligraphy, get in touch and ask me how it might look!

The answer to the question at the top of the page: this calligraphy was written on A4 paper (21cm across by 29.7cm in height). Did you think it was smaller?