About This Project
Carton Bottles began in 2021 as a personal documentation effort. The founding idea was modest: to organise the scattered, often contradictory information about Western calligraphic traditions into a coherent, freely accessible resource.
The project is operated by Carton Bottles B.V., a small company registered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We are not an academy, a school, or a training provider. We are a small team of people who care about the subject and believe that well-structured information should be available to anyone who wants it.
Principles
The commitments that guide how we research, write, and present information about Western calligraphic traditions.
Accuracy Over Enthusiasm
Calligraphy attracts a great deal of romanticised content online — ornamental flourishes presented without context, historical claims repeated without citation, tool recommendations driven by sponsorship rather than experience. We try to be specific, cite our sources where they exist, and distinguish clearly between established historical knowledge and our own interpretation. When an area of letterform history remains genuinely debated among palaeographers, we present the competing views rather than flatten them into a single narrative.
Tools Serve Understanding
We do not sell equipment, endorse brands, or receive any compensation from tool manufacturers. Our materials guide exists to help learners make informed decisions, not to drive purchases. When we discuss a Mitchell nib or a particular sumi ink, we describe its functional characteristics — reservoir behaviour, ink flow rate, line quality — rather than offering a consumer verdict. The goal is for readers to understand what properties matter for a given script, so they can evaluate any product themselves.
Respect for the Tradition
Western calligraphy is a living craft tradition with roots reaching back over two millennia. The monks who copied manuscripts in Carolingian scriptoria, the writing masters who engraved Copperplate copybooks, the twentieth-century revivalists who studied ancient exemplars under magnifying glasses — all contributed something irreplaceable. We try to present this heritage with the seriousness it deserves, while remaining genuinely accessible to newcomers who may have encountered calligraphy only through Instagram reels or wedding invitation fonts.
Honesty About Limitations
We are not master calligraphers. We are researchers and educators who have spent years studying the subject, reading the primary sources, and practising with the tools — but whose own letterforms remain firmly in the "competent amateur" category. Where our knowledge is incomplete, we say so and point to better sources. Where a topic requires specialist palaeographic training we lack, we note that gap explicitly. This is not false modesty; it is simply an accurate description of who we are.
Our Intended Audience
This project is designed for adults who want to understand Western calligraphic traditions with some depth. You might be:
- A complete beginner who wants to start with context, not just instructions — someone who asks "why does the letter look like that?" before picking up a nib.
- A hobbyist who has been practising for months or years but wants to understand the historical and structural foundations that most tutorial content skips entirely.
- A design student exploring letterform history as part of a broader typographic education — looking for well-cited references rather than surface-level summaries.
- Someone who simply finds the subject interesting and wants well-organised reading material they can return to over time.
This project is probably not for you if:
- You are looking for professional certification or credentials — we issue none and cannot endorse anyone's competency.
- You need a live instructor or interactive feedback on your letter spacing, stroke angle, or nib pressure — that requires individualised attention we cannot provide.
- You want a quick "learn calligraphy in 30 days" programme — the craft does not work that way, and we would not pretend otherwise.
- You are seeking commercially licensed content for use in your own products or publications — our materials are copyrighted, though we are open to discussing non-commercial use.
We are a modest resource. We do what we can do well, and we are clear about what falls outside our scope.
A Small Team
We are a small group — two researchers with backgrounds in art history and typographic studies, and one web developer who keeps the site running. We are based in Amsterdam but the project serves readers internationally, primarily in Canada where our online materials are most actively used. We do not have a social media presence. We prefer to spend our time on the content itself.
Elise V.
Lead Researcher, Script History (MA Art History, Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Elise has spent nine years studying the evolution of Western letterforms, with a particular focus on the transition from Carolingian to Gothic scripts in Low Countries manuscripts. She developed the chronological framework that structures the Script Traditions section. Her work is methodical — sometimes painstakingly so — and she is the one who insists on triple-checking every ductus diagram before publication.
Jan K.
Materials & Tools Editor (BA Graphic Design, Willem de Kooning Academie)
Jan came to calligraphy through typography — specifically through a nagging curiosity about what happened before phototypesetting. Over seven years of self-directed study and correspondence with working calligraphers, he developed the Materials Guide. He is known for being blunt about tool quality and occasionally testing nibs to destruction to understand their failure points. He maintains our annotated bibliography.
Sara M.
Web Developer & Site Operations
Sara built the website and keeps it running. Her background is in front-end development with a longstanding interest in digital preservation of cultural materials. She joined the project in early 2022 after encountering an early draft of the Script Traditions content. She handles all technical infrastructure and occasionally contributes to the Resources section when she finds a particularly well-digitised manuscript collection online.
How This Project Came to Exist
The initial problem was unglamorous: finding reliable, well-sourced information about Western calligraphic scripts in one place proved surprisingly difficult. Plenty of tutorial content existed online — YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, blog posts — but it tended toward the performative. Beautiful finished pieces without explanation of the underlying structure. Product recommendations without disclosure. Historical claims presented without sources.
Meanwhile, the genuinely excellent reference material — Edward Johnston's original writings, the scholarly papers on manuscript traditions, the practitioner handbooks from the mid-twentieth century — was scattered across university libraries, out-of-print catalogues, and specialist booksellers. A motivated learner could piece it together, but the process took months of searching and cross-referencing.
Carton Bottles started as a shared document — literally a Google Doc — between two friends in Amsterdam who had been studying calligraphy independently and kept sending each other the same PDFs. The document grew. It acquired a table of contents, then an index, then cross-references. At some point in late 2021, it became clear that the thing wanted to be a website.
We registered the company in November 2021. The first version of the site went live in February 2022 with three pages. We have been expanding and revising the content since then, at whatever pace our capacity allows. There is no deadline, no investor, and no growth target. The work continues because the subject continues to reward careful attention.
Carton Bottles B.V. provides educational and informational content only. We do not offer professional training, artistic certification, career counselling, or any regulated services. Our materials are intended to support self-directed learning and personal enrichment. We make no guarantees about outcomes, skill development, or professional advancement. All content reflects our understanding of the subject and should not be treated as authoritative or exhaustive.
Questions About the Project?
We welcome enquiries about our content, corrections to inaccuracies, and suggestions for topics we should address.
Explore the Materials
Start with whichever section draws your curiosity — the history of script traditions, the mechanics of tools and materials, or a structured learning path through the craft.