Month: February 2018

Letizia Morley

Snow drops on Cambo Estate, Scotland

A0E85BC6-08BB-4FEE-A00E-6A531F914390
© Letizia Morley 2018

Here on the east coast of Scotland, in the town of St Andrews in particular, we don’t get much snow at all. If it does snow, it is just a dusting that seems to melt instantaneously. I love snow and miss it very much, being from the Boston area in New England, USA. A couple weekends ago, I took my kids to a nearby mansion & 70 acre estate called Cambo Estate. It has a national collection of snow drop flowers. I was curious to see what the fuss was about. On this raw February day, we strolled down the wooded path and enjoyed these delicate beauties, snow or no snow. I’m not sure how this year’s blooms compared to other years but it was certainly beautiful. 

Letizia Morley

Gothic Calligraphy Practice

C081B6E1-2EFE-4110-9B8E-D64DD7409330
© Letizia Morley 2018

It takes me a long long time to practise scripts where I feel comfortable doing a finished project. Here I was working on my gothic textura quadrata font, which was popular in the 1400s and 1500s. It has a gently hypnotic effect with its forest of tall, narrow, rectangular letters so close together. The text is from an old Shaker song of 1848 from America’s New England area. Shakers, similar to the Quakers, were a small religious group that began in the 18th century in England and migrated to the New World. They were known for having simple lifestyles so this song expresses that sentiment. I can’t say the textura quadrata font actually matches the song’s message, but I just picked a text at random.