Enfilade

The last weeks for this display at the V&A:

The Lost Art of Writing
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 6 September 2013 — 4 May 2015

Inkstand, Sheffield plate, ca. 1810 (London: V&A)

“Beautiful Writing pleases everyone, it makes one sought after,” explained the French writer Père Gregoire Martin in 1761.

Having a fine writing hand was not only a useful skill but the sign of an educated and genteel person

This small display in the Metalware gallery explores some of the objects used in writing, from a medieval penner to an ingenious 18th-century globe inkstand and a pen rest designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse. These objects, made to serve the art of writing, have been displaced by the new virtual world of icons and toolbars.