Spotlight: our at-home calligraphy kit

Laura Ripley tries her hand at our calligraphy home kit, just in time for Christmas card season

It's week 546 of lockdown – or it certainly feels like it. Netflix has been completed and you're running out of things to do. How can you fill your time when you can't go anywhere? 

It's Christmas card season, so I thought I'd try learning calligraphy. A refined, elegant skill to reflect how *ahem* refined and elegant I have become over the past year. Enter The Indytute's At Home Calligraphy Workshop.

What's in the kit?

The kit arrives personalised with your name on the outer box and inside everything you need for this lesson is ready and waiting for you to unpack. 

• A quality nib
• Oblique nib holder
• Pot of sumi ink
• Comprehensive workbook
• Premium practice pad
• Laminated guidelines and alphabet exemplar
• Personalised notecard
• Luxury gift box

The tutorial

Being left handed, I always thought calligraphy is something that would be impossible (all those ink smudges), but the fancy nib holder helps you avoid that issue.

Now, I wouldn't say my handwriting is bad when I try to write neatly, but there's always been something about calligraphy that appeals to me.

This kit comes with everything I needed to get started, including some online tutorials which are hosted by calligraphy teacher, Stacy.

The online tutorial starts with setting up your nib in the holder, you are shown how to do this for if you are left or right handed. 

Next you go onto learning the strokes and using the guideline sheet behind the paper as a guide. The video shows you everything you need to know in preparation for starting to write letters. This includes things such as pressure on certain points of a letter, and how you hold the nib holder. 

The results

Once you've completed the basics, it's time to move onto letters. There is a sheet you can practice by tracing over first, then it’s time to let your hand loose and write for yourself. 

I still have a long way to go with my calligraphy skills, but for a beginner I think I'm doing OK.

I’ve done the course just in time to add some flare into my Christmas cards this year… now all I need to do is practise.

FURTHER READING: Check out this review of one of our other creative home kits – lino cutting. 

Main image: Photo by Diana Schröder-Bode. All other photography by Laura Ripley.