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Listen to “Why Letterpress Endures” with master printer Blake Riley

This week on “The Secrets of Mastery,” the creative director of Arion Press discusses his craft’s appeal through the centuries—and his own, surprisingly egalitarian views on what ‘mastery’ means.

San Francisco’s “Last Black Calligrapher” Invites You to Go Deeper

Hunter Saxony III imbues his lettering work with layers of meaning, while also intentionally leaving it open to interpretation. In the process, he’s taking an age-old, traditional art form in a new direction. One summer morning in 2018, the artist currently known as Hunter Saxony III sat down in his San Francisco studio with eight…

View “Inside the Hopi Creators’ World”

Although she closed her Santa Fe gallery and retail space, Singular Couture, in 2020, artist and collector Sarah Nolan still commissions the hand-painted, one-of-a-kind silk coats for which her shop was well-known. Working with about 20 different artisans, including eight who are Native American, Nolan now showcases these wearable objets d’art from her own studio,…

Listen to “Shrine and the Art of Resilience”

Pandemic, political strife, poverty, war. In times of extreme upheaval—global or personal—can the act of art-making ease suffering and strengthen resilience?

Listen to “The Power of the Scribe”

Spiritual faith has long been shaped by the lettering on a religion’s sacred texts. This is particularly the case with Judaism, so we visited three Hebrew scribes — in Jerusalem, New York City, and the liberal enclave of Berkeley, California — to understand why such laborious traditions continue.

Fountain Pen Resources

As with many subjects that draw perfectionists and collectors, the fountain pen world offers a variety of superb resources for finding great pens, understanding their fine points (excuse the pun), and fixing old pens that need some TLC. Here are some of the more prominent resources. Richard’s Pens – for decades, Richard Binder has served…

The Perfect Pen

Gorgeous pens have always symbolized the art of writing at its finest—the quintessential combination of beauty, tradition, and skill. But did you ever think of the fountain pen as a tool of environmental consciousness? Our author certainly does. Considering the fountain pen’s myriad varieties, and the powers of vintage pens in particular, he also shops very selectively, cleans his pens regularly, and searches for (and sometimes even makes) the perfect ink.

By TIM REDMOND

Basic Pen Care: Tips, Tools, and Techniques—even for making your own ink!

If your pen skips—a very common problem—it might just be clogged. Fountain pens need to be clean to work right, and fountain pen ink will eventually dry and clog the very tiny capillary channels that funnel the ink to the nib. So cleaning your pen regularly is a good idea. And this task doesn’t have…

The Power of the Scribe

For centuries, spiritual faith has been shaped in part by how its scribes form the letters of their sacred texts. This is particularly the case with Judaism. We visit with three scribes in three very different corners of Jewish faith—Jerusalem; New York City’s Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn; and the liberal enclave of Berkeley, California—to understand why people still go to all this trouble. Along the way, we walk across the religious aisle to the Muslim world to see what happens to the Urdu language of India and Pakistan when its script gets computerized.

By BRYCE T. BAUER
With LYNN HOLSTEIN, TODD OPPENHEIMER, and ALI ETERAZ

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