The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]

The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]

Carington Bowles I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is decorated at the top and sides with small scenes that show men working in a paper mill, making pounce, black ink, sealing wax and examining quills. Moral verses at center were added in pen and ink by Joshua Brookes, a student at Mr. Trubey's Academy, Red Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London (see 26.28.802 for another sheet signed by Brookes in 1783). The work comes from a genre known as writing sheets, writing blanks, penmanship exercises, letter sheets or school pieces, published in Britain ca. 1660 to 1860 and used by students to demonstrate their handwriting abilities.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]The Art of Preparing and Making the Materials used in Writing [School piece or Penmanship sheet]

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.