Careers behind the art

This lesson asks you to identify careers related to visual arts and to describe the skills, education and training they need. The museum offers two historical crafts, the architect and the calligrapher, taken from encyclopaedia entries; today's careers and their requirements come from your class. ¹

From each record, list the knowledge and skills it names, and note where the record is silent. A record that names no training is an answer too.

Pick one of the two and name a present-day career close to it. Set out the skills, the education and the training it asks, and compare them with the historical path.

Follow one calligrapher's training. Sami Efendi began at a mosque school, learning thuluth and naskh from Boşnak Osman Efendi and taking his licence from him. In those two scripts he had no other teacher. He entered the finance office in 1853. There he learned rik'a from Mümtaz Efendi, and divani, jali divani and the drawing of the tughra from Nâsıh Efendi, the calligraphy teacher of the Imperial Council. He took ta'liq from Kıbrısîzâde İsmâil Hakkı, with a licence in 1857, and in 1864 an honorary licence in thuluth-naskh from Mehmed Şevki Efendi and his uncle Mehmed Hulûsi Efendi ². On 18 April 1878 he succeeded Nâsıh Efendi as teacher of the various scripts at the Imperial Council, and his house became, in effect, a school of calligraphy ².

Who built a building, and how do we know? The record on the architect shows what a document can settle. Hayreddin is the architect the documents name as builder of the Mostar Bridge, built around 974 AH (1566–67) ³. An order of 9 Şevval 975 AH to the chief architect Sinan asked for an architect to build a fortress at Makarska and named Hayreddin, who had built the Mostar Bridge before. The entry takes this as evidence that the bridge was not Sinan's, as had been rumoured ³. For Davud Ağa the clue is the building itself: he took care that his name appeared in the inscriptions of his buildings, so an inscribed work counts as his ⁴. Even so, the entry considers it very probable that the man who built the bridge and the fortress is the Hayreddin who examined the Istanbul works, but it does not settle the question ³.

Sami Efendi took his licences from different teachers for different scripts. Is a craftsman better trained by one teacher for everything or by a different master for each skill, and what is the strongest objection to your answer?

• Sami Efendi: his teachers, his posts and his pupils.
• The calligrapher: the licence, the ceremony and the chain of masters.
• The architect: the palace office, the chief architect's licence, and the cases of Hayreddin and Davud Ağa.

Read the records on the architect and the calligrapher. Draw a path for one career, from the first lesson to the first independent work, using only what the record says.