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Summer Program 2011 - Ukrainian Art of Cursive Writing

Due to popular demand, the volunteers of The Ukrainian Community of Western Pennsylvania offered again its Ukrainian Art of Cursive Writing program at the Pittsburgh International Folk Festival in Monroeville from May 13 through 15, 2011. Everyone who stopped by UCOWPA table had an opportunity to learn how their names look in Ukrainian (see our Photo Gallery). This program was also offered at the Collegiate YMCA’s International Festival 2011 on July 14, 2011 at the University of Pittsburgh and at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church Ukrainian Food and Fun Festival  in McKees Rocks from August 24 through August 27, 2011.  In addition, it was offered at Baltimore’s 35th Anniversary Ukrainian Festival on September 10-11, 2011.    

Calligraphy (or cursive writing) often called the art of fancy lettering, and is a method of letter-shaped graphic emotional self-expression of an artist. Did you ever wonder how your name would look in a different language?

Ukrainians use the Cyrillic writing system based on Byzantine statute that was created in the IX century by Cyril and Methodius. Ukrainians are the second most populous nation that use the Cyrillic. Among other nations that use the Cyrillic are Russians, Belarusians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Bosnians, and Macedonians to name a few.
 
Per I. Kamanin, one of the Ukrainian experts in paleography, the history of Ukrainian cursive has three periods of development. The first period is entitled "charter cursive" (XI - beginning of XVI century) which followed the Byzantine tradition and was not exposed to foreign influence.  
 
The second period (the second half of XVI century) was a transition to genuine cursive decorative styles. During this period, the letters are characterized by the fusion of writing, small size and almost the same height. In addition, some influence of Western cursive was felt which came to Ukraine from Poland and Slovakia.
During the third period that lasted from the end of XVI to the middle of XVIII century, the Ukrainian art of cursive writing reached its height. This is a period when calligraphy organically became part of the Baroque culture. Visual samples of documents from that time signify unique appearance and high aesthetics values of handwritten documents which were close to absolute perfection. Some experts in this field believe that the Ukrainian cursive of the Baroque period with its complexity and creativity is close to such a well known phenomenon of world culture as the Chinese and Japanese hieroglyphic writing.
 
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