Handwriting

Remember all the time you spent practicing cursive writing in school, and how difficult it was to get right?  Remember how you had to write your essays first in pencil and then in ink? Remember how it used to be important to learn to sign your name, so you one day could put it on your paycheck?  Now we have direct deposit and online banking, and I know a lot of teachers and parents that are horrified because children's handwriting skills are deteriorating due to keyboards and touch-screens.  

Calligraphy is an art form that might become more and more valued, and more and more rare.  I have always admired (and envied) good calligraphers.  When I discovered Arabic calligraphy with all its beauty and different styles I was (and still am) awestruck.  The Muslim faith does not allow one to make a picture of Mohammed or living beings, so they use the written word and often stylize the writing to create forms. The results are unique pictures and beautiful works of art.

We recently went to an amazing calligraphy exhibition inside Aya Sofia, and our young M, and aspiring artist, took all these pictures (and then some...)  The exhibition is called "Lisan-ı Hat ile Aşk-ı Nebi", which means something like "The love of line and language"

This is called geometric Kufic script