I’ve been itching to write this blog for a while now! There’s a lot of fear around AI, and its potential to completely transform how we use the internet, its threat to jobs and the impact it will have on creative industries. It’s not the first threat technology has brought to creatives: and the proof is modern calligraphers like me. The printing press was invented in 1440, and brought into commercial use in 1454. Yet it’s 2025 and I still make my living with a dippy ink pot and a pen with interchangeable calligraphy nibs.
There aren’t as many scribes as there used to be. My knowledge of history is extremely sketchy – I should add this as a disclaimer of sorts! I imagine there used to be rows of scribes in monks’ habits, bent over half-finished bibles and writing by candlelight. Skip forward a few hundred years to the 20th century and things got to a stage where you couldn’t visit a Premier Inn without finding a dinky plastic mass produced bible in one of the bedside tables. (I always slept better on the side without!) Phew, thank goodness for Gutenberg, hey?
Seriously though, AI will be transformative for the creative industries: it will be capable of churning out visual advertisements, creating wall art and dreamlike images of landscapes and all the kinds of things we love to hang on our walls (we’re all different. Mine’s a Metallica poster or a beautifully painted bird, flower or mountain; I know some people like abstract art and contemporary images. I’ll just carry on being weird and eclectic!)
But when I’m buying art for my walls, I look for the human touch. And when that’s not there, you really can tell. I like to dive into a piece of artwork and see the cross hatching, the brush work, the insane amount of detail in the wing of a butterfly, the expertise in creating light and shadow (I’m looking at a watercolour painting my Mum did, which is hanging in a Nkuku frame above my desk).
And in my own work, I really believe it’s the human touch that makes calligraphy really worthwhile. (The worst compliment you can give a calligrapher is, “it looks so perfect, it’s as if it was printed!”) It’s touching the ink on the page and feeling the shape of the letters under your fingers. It’s the slight variation in the curve of a t stroke, or the way a letter is emphasised to fill white space with a flourish. It’s the smooth-but-not-sterile lines and strokes. It’s the way you can see the calligrapher’s hand in their work.
AI needn’t threaten every artist or creator. Staying ahead of the curve (pun not intended!) isn’t easy. As a calligrapher producing handwritten poems and family trees I’m facing competition from printed versions which undercut my pricing by a mile.
I can’t compete with digital items which take a fraction of the time to create online and print. I’ve learned not to even try. The pieces I create – original artwork with every element meticulously hand written – are worth far more. I’ve recently created four full size family trees, with 40 names and dates hand lettered, and illustrations including flowers and cat silhouettes. (I’ll tell you about those in another blog.) These family trees are special. They’ve been individually written with the greatest care and attention to every little detail.
The people who reach out to me for bespoke family trees and custom calligraphy poems are looking for meaningful gifts. Something over and above ‘just’ a family tree or a poem print. Something made with love. Something unique. Not just something expensive – it’s easy to buy a bit of tech these days, but it takes thought and a special kind of person to find a calligrapher to write something really personal. I’m delighted that, 584 years since the invention of the Gutenberg press, I can still create beautiful and meaningful art from words, names and a little illustration.
I’m equally delighted that I don’t have to be a monk to do it. For so many reasons, that would not have worked out well.