Portsmouth’s Calligrapher
The vast amount of skill involved in being a calligrapher was revealed in an entertaining talk to the club this month. David Graham, a local calligrapher, showed slides of some marvellous examples of his work, as he peppered his talk with interesting facts and anecdotes, often involving the aristocracy.
He described the surprising amount of research needed to carry out some of his commissions, such as a vellum scroll made for Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the Admiral of the Fleet, when he was given the freedom of the city of Portsmouth in 1976. This job involved interviewing Lord Louis at his Broadlands home, not then open to the public, to discuss aspects of the information he would like contained on the scroll.
“To my surprise Lord Louis asked for a water colour painting of HMS Kelly so I had to track down an image of the ship to work with.”
Mr Graham, a member of the Society of Scribes and Illustrators, the leading organisation for calligraphers, also had to liaise with the College of Heralds to obtain a copy of Lord Louis’s family crest. He described how difficult and time-consuming a task it was to recreate a family crest because of the incredible amount of detail involved.
“Lord Mountbatten’s crest includes tiny lions, the size of my fingernail, wearing striped jerseys.”
Mr Graham was also commissioned to design scrolls for the Prince of Wales in 1979, the Princess of Wales in 1992, as well as for local dignatories such as John Ramsden Haslegrave, a former city council chief executive and town clerk. Other scrolls he produced included one to mark forty years of friendship between Portsmouth and its twin city of Duisburg, a Rhine port.
He said working with vellum was wonderful and provided some pieces for club members to examine. “Because it’s skin, it’s layered, making alterations possible, but it is also very expensive.”
A vote of thanks to Mr Graham was given by Rosemary Hampton.