Learning a craft: the calligrapher

Brief

This lesson asks you to describe, from your own research, work opportunities in the field of visual arts and the skills they require, and to compare those skills with your own. The museum offers one craft: how a calligrapher was trained and licensed, and who practises the art today according to UNESCO. Your research into opportunities in Ontario, and the comparison with your own skills, are for your class. ¹

What does the learner practise, and what skill does it build?

List the steps of training in the record. Next to each, write the skill you think it builds, and ask where else that skill is used.

What does the path from learner to practitioner look like?

Draw the path the records describe. Then draw a path you found in your own research, and mark where they differ.

Go deeper

When a pupil's training was done, the licence was given at a ceremony. It was held in a mosque or a large house, and in summer at Kağıthane, and it often ended in a feast ². A body of calligraphers, the jury, endorsed the licence in writing in Arabic and congratulated the new master ². A pen name agreed in advance was given at the ceremony and written into the licence ². The licence itself was written in riqa', naming the teacher and granting the pupil leave to set his signature beneath his writing ². From 1914 the School of Calligraphers issued its licences in divani, with the teacher's seal ².

How do we know?

The entry credits the ceremony to one man, with a hedge: Ottoman sources credit Zeyn al-Din Abd al-Rahman Ibn al-Sa'igh (d. 845 AH) with first setting this custom ². Some masters limited their pupils. Mehmed Şevki (d. 1304 AH) taught only ten, and admitted new ones only as pupils were licensed ². Hasan Riza Efendi gave the licence to seventeen students ³. The record also lists the books the entries name but which were not read for it, among them the Tuhfe-i Hattatin of Mustakimzade.

Think about it

In this craft the teacher wrote the licence and a jury of calligraphers endorsed it. Is a craft better served when a jury confirms the teacher's judgement, and what is the strongest objection to your answer?

Into the museum

The calligrapher: training, licence, ceremony and the chain of masters.
Hasan Riza Efendi: teacher at the School of Calligraphers from 1914.
Sami Efendi: the licences he took in 1857 and 1864.

Try this

Read the record of Calligrapher. Write the steps of training in order, and beside them the career or study area where each skill could be used.