Banknotes, Books and Buildings with Scribe, Susie Leiper

Laura Edralin (00:03) Welcome to the Life of Letters, a podcast where we explore the artistry, history and future of calligraphy, penmanship, handwriting and lettering. I'm your host, Laura Edrelin, a calligrapher based in London with a forgotten degree in archaeology and a curiosity for the stories behind the letters and beneath the ink. Through conversations with historians, artists, societies and stationary experts, I want to discover which of the forgotten letters Who are those pioneers of the pen and journey the world to join the dots between tradition and modern creativity? Whether you're a seasoned calligrapher, a lover of beautiful handwriting, or simply someone fascinated by the evolution of letters, type and the written word, it's great to have you with me. So grab a cuppa, perhaps your favourite pen, settle in And let's dive into the life of letters. Laura Edralin (00:56) I am delighted to be speaking with Susie Leeper. As a calligrapher and painter, Susie works on everything from monumental walls and canvases to small tablets and artist books. Her secretary hand calligraphy features on all four Royal Bank of Scotland polymer banknotes and her work is held in many national and international collections. Suzy is a member of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators and the Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society, two institutions I have become aware of since researching this podcast. So I'm really excited to talk to Suzy about her work and also all these sorts of places where she is connected. Suzy, a huge welcome to the Life of Letters podcast. Thank you so much for being here. And firstly, I thought we'd kick off with just getting a little bit of a background into how you got into the world of calligraphy and sort of working with letters. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Susie Leiper (01:39) Thank you. Well, I very much came in through the back door. I didn't have any formal training, didn't go to art college. My mother used to tell me that unlike most four year olds who draw houses and cats, I would get out the Glasgow Herald and copy the letters off the front page. And then when I was 13, I won the Platingham National Handwriting Contest and won a cruise around the Mediterranean. So I was obviously quite good at handwriting. Laura Edralin (02:10) Wow. Susie Leiper (02:22) And then fast forward to the 1980s when I was living in Hong Kong and I saw an advert for calligraphy classes, Western calligraphy classes by a given by a Chinese person. And I really loved that. He trained under Donald Jackson in the States. That name meant really nothing to me at that time. And then when we came back to Scotland and after several babies, I took up calligraphy again at Edinburgh College of Art and at evening classes. And that led to then joining the advanced training scheme, which was run and still is by the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, you basically, it's more like mentoring rather than actual physical writing. And that led through one of the tutors to being invited to be part of the team of the St. John's Bible as a scribe. And that really was where I had to conform to discipline and learn to write really properly. And that was under Donald Jackson. was a strange thing. was the artistic director of that project. So it linked back to Derek Powell in Hong Kong. Laura Edralin (03:24) Wow. Yeah. So there's a sort of full circle effect coming through. Yeah. And then am I right in thinking you incorporate painting a little bit within your work and did calligraphy kind of follow painting or did painting follow calligraphy? Which one came first? Susie Leiper (03:33) Yes, was as if life had come full circle. No calligraphy definitely came first, but I think having been inspired by all those visits to Donald Jackson's scriptorium where he would often be painting illuminations while we were there perfecting our writing, after I'd finished or shortly before I finished writing on the St. John's Bible, I just thought, I really want to paint. So I joined up again to Edinburgh College of Art evening class, went along and the guy said, you know, why are you here? And I said, well, I've come to learn to paint and he said, well, just get on with it. So that was the start of painting. then shortly after that, I joined a class called Approaching Abstraction. I still, that really was wonderful. Laura Edralin (04:20) So that's really interesting because you've obviously got the painting side which was really taking you wherever you wanted to in terms of being playful, being abstract, giving you kind of free rein to do what you wanted with the paint. But then you've also got alongside that a very heavy disciplined script practice and all the calligraphy formalities. So there's two things working together, Did you begin to combine those straight away? Susie Leiper (05:04) Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. I still feel in my studio today, which is quite large, I'm very lucky, but, I need to have a tidy corner, have a tidy desk for the calligraphy, and then I have to be careful if I'm going to splash paint around that I don't get it on the paper of where the calligraphy is. So that's always an issue. And I think always because calligraphy is so demanding, technically, I do find it quite difficult to loosen up with painting, to just let rip. Laura Edralin (05:19) It's the blend of the two sort of very different ways that art can be practiced, right? So the free form, expressive style that the painting can give you. then with the script then for calligraphy, because I've seen some of your work and that it can be quite different. Susie Leiper (05:38) Yeah. Laura Edralin (05:53) Is there a particular script that you started with? Is there a particular script that you've kind of worked towards more recently? Susie Leiper (06:01) Well, I think our generation of calligraphers all began with an edged pen. That's a pen that has a straight edge, a steel nib, a bit like the end of a square screwdriver. And that allows you to have thicks and thins and gives a sort of elegance to your script. So I think we all learned that from copying. And it's different from what your generation, I think, are keener on now. And that's modern calligraphy, which you do with a pointed pen or with a brush where the thick and thin is created by pressure and release. If you want a thick part of a letter, you put more pressure on the pen and then you release that. And that's a skill as well. And you can translate that into a brush. And I've taught myself to write with Chinese brushes when we were in Hong Kong, and I've just loved that. In fact, I talked about going to the Edinburgh College of Art painting classes and the first thing I did there, had... Laura Edralin (06:43) Yeah. Wow. Susie Leiper (07:00) ...acres of Chinese paper because I have a lot of that and I had Chinese paints and I just covered splosh, splosh, splosh with lots of reds and so on. And then I went home and I painted all these images, Chinese images of a garden in gold on that. And then I invented a script that I could write with a Chinese brush that looked like Chinese calligraphy and slotted the elements of this text about a garden into this, into these paintings and then created a great big long Chinese hand scroll... Laura Edralin (07:28) Wow. Susie Leiper (07:29) ...painting and calligraphy were definitely coming together at that time and I think that was 2004. Laura Edralin (07:33) Yeah. Okay, and so that leads me on actually to ask a little bit about that unique blend that you've got of not only these two sort of mediums of the painting and the calligraphy, but also the tools that you're using and bringing these themes of Chinese art, Western calligraphy together. Is there something that really inspired you to kind of create these pieces and they are sort of part of your artistic journey or do you find that you're sort of weaving them through always? Susie Leiper (08:09) I think how it began in the year 2000, our whole family went to Hong Kong for six months and I just thought I'm going to spend these six months learning about Chinese calligraphy, learning to do Chinese calligraphy and to do painting. Not because I wanted to become a Chinese painter or calligrapher because I don't think that's really possible for a Westerner, but I wanted to learn about the techniques and the materials. And I was also looking at a lot of Chinese paintings because that was accessible in Hong Kong. And I think I was realizing how well the Chinese blend or integrate calligraphy and painting. And I've always just hoped that I could do that. Laura Edralin (08:46) Yeah, and even now, do you see little bits of the maybe more Chinese influences coming through in your work? Or do you feel like that's sort of in the past? Susie Leiper (08:57) I think that's gone slightly into the background, but I think that was the basis of my learning. you even the extreme discipline required to write a nice looking Chinese character is much the same as the spacing and rhythm and everything is much the same as writing any script. Laura Edralin (09:03) Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and in your studio, I mean, this is a sort of joke that goes on and on with with lots of different calligraphers I talked to where you kind of end up with endless supplies and, you know, shopping for new tools and pens is just is such an exciting thing. But have you in your studio got lots of different elements that inspire you maybe stuff from from your time in Hong Kong, maybe things that you've brought back and collected over the years? You said you've got a very sort of tidy discipline corner. Does that ripple out into lots of... Susie Leiper (09:50) Yeah, I have a windowsill covered in pots of Chinese brushes, quills, pencils, charcoal, the lot. And I have a planchette full of paper that I'm keeping for something special one day, but I'm now realising, well, I think maybe I should just use that paper and not go and buy something else. Laura Edralin (10:10) Yeah, that's the, it's like a, it's like the sort of pain of the artist, isn't it? It's, it's knowing you've got these lovely things that maybe you've acquired from all sorts of different places or been given and you just think it's like a lovely new notebook. How could I possibly ruin it? So we mentioned in the beginning, you have this incredible way of working on almost any surface from large wall projects to tiny pieces... Susie Leiper (10:19) Yep. Yes. Laura Edralin (10:39) ...but scaling work is a huge process and I just wondered, do you have any secrets around doing something on large? Susie Leiper (10:47) Well, the scaling up came about really quite randomly and I was asked if I would like to paint Robert Burns' poetry on the walls of the Robert Burns' cottage in Ayrshire. And I thought, ooh, I'd like that job, but I don't know if I can do this. So I put up a big canvas in the studio where I used to go every Thursdays and I just started writing the names of Scottish mountains on it with a brush, with an edge brush, calligraphically, standing up, no lines. And I realised, oh, actually I can do this. And I think that was all because when I was working on the St. John's Bible under Donald Jackson, he said, when I was slightly hesitant about taking on this project that I thought might be rather boring, writing the same every day, I'll talk about that later because it certainly wasn't. He said, I think you'll find that after three years of extreme discipline writing this Bible, you'll be able to do anything, you'll have the freedom to do what you want. And he was absolutely right. I could just stand there and write with a brush on the canvas. So that's how it started. Laura Edralin (11:30) Wow, wow. So you've done that one on a canvas and then do you do other projects on different surfaces on that scale? Susie Leiper (11:56) Yes, yes, yes. I think one of the most fun projects I was involved with was with our artist book group. There's a group of six of us, we're a collective and we come from different disciplines, but we all revolve around the artist book. And we have a calligrapher, an architect, a textile artist, and so on. And we were selected to take part in a festival called Hidden Door, which takes place in abandoned buildings in Edinburgh that belonged to Edinburgh Council. And we were selected to take one of 18 vaults behind the Waverley station. And we thought, what we're going to do with this vault, you know, like an under the arches thing, we thought, which was all damp and disgusting, we can't fill it with artist books. So we suddenly had the vision, let's treat the whole vault as a book with these great doors would be the cover. And we looked into the history of the area. And that's what our exhibits were based on. And then my, my project was on the inside doors to talk about the history of the area and the vaults and the present day, the festival. And then on the outside, I painted a huge what might be and we asked visitors to the festival to say, what do they think these vaults should become in the future? And every time somebody gave us an answer, I would just write that, paint it up onto these vault doors. So at the end of the festival, after a week of painting outdoors on these horrible doors, which were shiny and horrible paint. We had this marvellous collection of ideas about the future of the area. Laura Edralin (13:30) Wow, wow, that's like the original mind map... Susie Leiper (13:35) Yes, yeah, I just love that experience because all these people come up and say, oh, wow, what are you doing? And I could talk about my craft at the same time as creating something. Laura Edralin (13:41) Yeah. Yeah, and that's an art in itself, actually, having somebody watch you do something live. And then on the other scale of things, the sort of smaller projects, what kind of things have you had to kind of squeeze onto very small surfaces and canvases? Susie Leiper (13:48) Oh, I know what this is going to be. You just want to do a video. Oh, no, thank you. I think small things come about mainly because I love making books and I like the fact that if you make a book you make the pages, you make the end papers, you make the covers, I make the slipcase or something to put it in. It's a total project and it can be very small or it can be a bit larger. Laura Edralin (14:28) Yeah, yeah, you can scale that as much as you want, right? And then do. Susie Leiper (14:30) Yes, I have to be nice if I'm painting letters that are quite small. I do wear one of those jewellers or dentists eye things to it Yes. Laura Edralin (14:43) Yeah, to magnify everything. But I did wonder about tools in terms of scaling projects. If it's a very small surface, are you having to use incredibly small, brushes? Are you using brushes to create this? Are you still using the broad tip? Susie Leiper (14:58) Sometimes, yeah. Yes. Well, for small things, I'm doing painted lettering, I would probably be using either very small sable brushes or small Chinese brushes. The great thing about Chinese brushes, if you know what the hair bit looks like, they have quite a fat body and then a very sharp tip. And the body, that fatness holds the ink or the paint and the tip can be... just wiped on the edge of the dish to become incredibly fine. So you can keep going for a long time with this loaded brush, but get extremely fine lines at the same time. Laura Edralin (15:37) That's very interesting. That makes me want to, yeah, it makes me want to go and try one. I've got one in the cupboard classic, you know, the same as you said earlier, it's sort of, it's there, but I can't possibly bear to use it. Susie Leiper (15:39) Yes, it's like your modern calligraphy. Yes. But then there's so many different types of Chinese brush, you you get sheep hair ones, which are kind of, you never get a really sharp point on those. You get mixed hair ones that have wolf eyebrows, I even have on one of them, and maybe fox hair around the outside, because the different hairs have different qualities, maybe sharpness or maybe absorbency. Laura Edralin (16:04) Wow. Yeah. That's fascinating. yeah, a huge amount of play and experimenting, I'm sure, has gone into sort of now your knowledge of every different Chinese brush pen as well, which is really what we want to encourage most people to do is sort of find that tool that really works for them as well. What have been some of your favourite projects to work on? You've mentioned a couple already, but what's been something that's really lit you up over the last few years? Susie Leiper (16:24) Well, I think really the biggest and best project I ever worked on was the St. John's Bible, which was the first handwritten and illuminated Bible for over 500 years, commissioned as a millennium project by St. John's University and Abbey in Minnesota. And there were six scribes and about 10 or 15 illuminators. The artistic director was Donald Jackson and the whole project operated out of his scriptorium in Wales. And as a scribe, I had to visit the scriptorium every two months or so to take back my written pages and then take away my blank pages to write at home. And it was the most difficult, difficult thing I ever did. And I think we all felt that as scribes. We were writing with quills that we had to, goose quills that we had to cut ourselves to precisely the right size to write this script that was about two millimeters high. We had to write on vellum, which is calf skin and it's a natural surface. So sometimes it was lumpy, sometimes it was shiny. It wasn't always easy. But once, you know, after a year or so of doing that and settling into it a bit, if the quill was right and the vellum was right and the sun was shining, I would just disappear into a, I suppose, a kind of meditative world. And I think that made me understand what it might have been like being a monk in the Middle Ages, just writing all day. You just forget the rest of the world because you were so intent on making the best letters you could and fitting it into the line. Laura Edralin (18:12) That's incredible. Do you know how many hours it took you? Days. Susie Leiper (18:17) We all had to write at the bottom of our pages roughly how many hours it took and nearly everybody was dead regular. The oldest person who was a man, he took about 12 hours per page. I took about six and a half. Somebody else took four. It was just, it was fairly steady. Laura Edralin (18:33) Yeah, wow. And did you did you find that physically challenging as well? Susie Leiper (18:41) Well, the very first thing we were taught when we went to the scriptorium to train was how to sit and how to get off the chair and how to look out the window every half hour and change your vision. So all those were great skills to learn, you know, not to sit cross legged and all slumped to one side, but to sit upright with right angles of your body. That's all been very valuable. Laura Edralin (19:00) Wow. Yeah, yeah. And I guess a project that has given you that discipline has carried on throughout your work. Susie Leiper (19:10) Exactly, that's what Donald said it would. And I think the other thing, it wasn't just about the writing or for the artist, the illuminating, it was being part of a team. You had to be able to be a team player. You had to fit in with everybody else. We had to all try and write the same. And now when I look back, you know, it's almost 20 years since I stopped writing on that Bible, I look back and I can't always tell whose page is whose because we were following Donald Jackson's script. Laura Edralin (19:12) Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. That's amazing. I'm just trying to picture it now. If there were illuminators creating, I presume, the sort of first letter on a page, are they going first or are you doing the page of words and then they're adding theirs in, or is it a combination? Susie Leiper (19:49) Yes? Yes? Well, after one of the scribes had to write the text after Donald had done a major illumination, he said that was so scary. So they changed after that and the writing was always done first and then illumination afterwards. Laura Edralin (20:13) Okay. gosh, it's, that is a real take. I love the idea that it is seeing a project like that on it as a team effort, because I think as calligraphers and artists, you do a lot of work on your own. Susie Leiper (20:30) I know, I know. Well, that was the other thing about the vault project with our artist book group. That was a collaborative effort and it was such fun. And even even the Royal Bank of Scotland banknotes, although I didn't know what I was doing when I embarked on that, I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and just write all this Gaelic poetry and I had no idea what it was for. When I learned what that was for and then I was in, I actually did the calligraphy on all the denominations after that. We did become part of a team and we had great parties and Laura Edralin (20:37) Yeah, yeah. Susie Leiper (20:58) It was fun. Laura Edralin (21:00) Amazing. So yeah, I was going to ask about the Bank of Scotland, the bank note. So Royal, Royal Bank of Scotland, yes. Susie Leiper (21:05) Royal Bank of Scotland, it's the Royal Bank of Scotland. Yeah, not the Bank of Scotland, because the Royal Bank of Scotland, obviously employed an agency, Nile Design, who's, them, CEO is just a great person. And she went along to the bank and said, because they'd employed the agency, what do you want in your bank notes? You want the usual old dude in a castle? And the person she was talking to said, well, no, can you do something different? So This agency went all around Scotland and spoke to people and asked them what they wanted to have on their banknotes and the overriding theme that came up was nature. So there's a theme of nature runs through all the notes. Laura Edralin (21:43) What a lovely theme. Susie Leiper (21:45) Of course, sadly, you know, the first note came out in think 2017 and then the 50 and about 2020 people then COVID people don't use banknotes to the same extent. So they don't get the exposure that we all thought they were going to get when we were also thrilled to be part of the banknotes. Laura Edralin (22:01) Yes, of course, of course. But do you hold a banknote and go, my goodness, that's my... Susie Leiper (22:07) Yeah, I do. And sometimes I tell people and they go, I don't believe it. Laura Edralin (22:11) That's such a great claim to fame. think that's brilliant. Susie Leiper (22:14) I remember I was giving a talk in China and I took about 15 or 20 of them just just in case. And after I'd finished the talk, I quietly gave the organizer one of the notes and some of the other Chinese attendees saw me and said, Oh, can I have one? So within a minute, all my 20 times five pound notes had gone. Laura Edralin (22:36) Yeah, its value is really quite different when it's not only currency, maybe not that they could spend, but currency to you and also your handiwork on there as well. Susie Leiper (22:41) Yes. Yes, yes. When the 50 came out, I thought, well, I really need to have a 50 in my collection. So I went to the local branch and I said, I'd like to have a 50 pound note, please. And I said, by the way, I did the calligraphy and I can't believe it. Wow, that's amazing. Then she said, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay for it. Which I did. No, no. Laura Edralin (23:04) I was going to say, can they give it to you free? Do you not get just free money out of this? That's a shame. And so you mentioned that you had to write a different phrases or parts of poetry for, and then did they select from the ones that you've written? Susie Leiper (23:19) Yes, it's quite some poetry, Scottish poetry. Well, the good thing about that job was I just I knew that they were going to well, I didn't know what I was doing it for, but I knew that they just wanted nice lines of poetry. So I just took hundreds of pieces of paper and wrote the thing hundreds of times and then selected my maybe my five best and gave them to the to the agency for them to scan. So that in some ways is a comforting kind of job to do because you don't have to take a deep breath and just write in the front of somebody's precious book. I mean those are the worst kind of jobs where you've only got one chance at it. And you can't even test the paper sometimes. It's a nightmare. Laura Edralin (23:46) Lovely. Yeah. Yeah, that is that's very scary. That is very scary. I wanted to ask a little bit about the SSI, so Society of Scribes and Illuminators. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that they do and how you became a member and what you do there? Susie Leiper (24:10) Well, the Society of Scribes and Illuminators is the oldest of the calligraphy societies and it was set up by Edward Johnson in 1921. Edward Johnson, people don't really know who he is, but actually he did design the typeface for the London Underground, which with modifications still exists. So actually he should really be very famous. He did medical studies in Edinburgh and then abandoned those and went and sat in the British Library and or British Museum at the time and looked at manuscripts and worked out how things were written. And he then with his students in 1921, he set up the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, which we call the SSI. And that was to sort of uphold the standards of penmanship and also to encourage people not just to copy and make precise letters in a copy, but to instill some kind of freedom or personality into the writing. Laura Edralin (25:14) Yeah, lovely. Susie Leiper (25:16) I joined the SSI in the mid 90s because my tutor at Edinburgh College of Art said I should. And, you know, it made you part of a tribe, as it were. And then you got the magazine and, then I joined the advanced training scheme with them. And it was for me, that was my education. And it still runs today and it has a lot of correspondence courses. They organize exhibitions, but there is the parallel... Laura Edralin (25:34) Yes, yes. Susie Leiper (25:43) ...a society called Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society, CLAS, which was set up in the mid-90s, I think perhaps to reach a wider audience, slightly less elitist and to focus perhaps more on teaching. But nowadays, most people who are fellows of one society are fellows of the other. I I became a fellow of both societies in 2006 and also the third society, which is called Letter Exchange, which has a broader remit. Letter Exchange has lot of carvers, stone carvers, wood carvers, typographers, a lot of professionals. So it's a slightly different society. Laura Edralin (26:24) Yeah, I love that. And these are all places where for a lot of people, maybe kind of establishing their own styles, their script, possibly wanting to gain more education, they can tap into that. It's a huge resource and one that I've only recently got connected with. And I think it's incredible that there are these places out there. And, you know, I hope lots more people do connect with them because it's. Susie Leiper (26:53) Yes, mean, the sad thing is calligraphy is not taught in any art colleges anymore. So, you know, it does run the risk of becoming a kind of hobby craft. But, you know, the societies uphold standards and through class, can do the ladder of training. Through the SSI, you can also do correspondence courses and learn from that. And there are lots of people out there, professionals, who are doing workshops. I did a lot of that. People said to me, if you ever see a Peter Thornton workshop, go to that. And I traveled around a lot in my early days, just going to good workshops. And that also introduced you to people from all over the country and to inspiring tutors. Laura Edralin (27:27) Yes. Yeah, I think that's definitely a key takeaway that I found and having spoken to a few people through the podcast, think hearing people talking about their journey into learning different styles, different ways of teaching as well, I think it's a hugely beneficial way. It can feel a little bit like, who am I to go and join another workshop? I should be teaching this, I should be at this standard, so I can't possibly look like I need to learn anything else. But actually, it's no, exactly, exactly. And so many different approaches. And also just to reinforce your knowledge and how you do teach, I think it's really it's a great way to to share different approaches and teach different people who will learn differently. Susie Leiper (28:06) No, no, think you can never stop learning, never. Yes, yes. Hmm. Hmm. But I think there are some people who are sort of workshop junkies and just go along and want to learn something new and buy all the stuff. There does come a time when you've actually, especially immediately you come back from a workshop, you want to just get on with it and make something that's new, that's not exactly what the teacher taught you, but using the skills you've learned. And that's a great way to develop. Laura Edralin (28:44) Yes. I love that. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you can go workshop crazy, can't you? And just almost hide, hide behind learning rather than actually do the creating. Susie Leiper (28:52) Yes. Yes. I also find that doing commissions is also a way forward for me or has been. Sometimes I'm asked to do something, think, I don't really want to do this. But, you know, I work out a way to do it. And then I realize, that's this is doable and I could take it somewhere else. that or it works the other way. Sometimes I'm given a commission and I think, how am I going to do this? And then I think, well, what am I doing at the moment? And it turns out that the commission, I do the commission in a way... Laura Edralin (29:14) Yeah. Susie Leiper (29:27) ...that reflects where I'm at at the moment. Laura Edralin (29:30) Yes, yeah. And in terms of the projects that you work on, obviously there's people who commission you to do things, but then there are projects that you must sort of self-initiate or have some sort of self-motivation behind. Is there particular projects that you've done just for your own interest? I'm thinking of the book and various things you can tell us about. Susie Leiper (29:56) Very few commissions come from me. They come as a request from outside. And some of them I've been doing for years, church memorial books or diplomas for the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. And actually those jobs in some ways are very boring. But on the other hand, they keep your hand in, they keep you writing. And I actually love them sometimes. It's like doing your maths homework. know, when you've done it, you've finished it. It's not like your English homework. Oh, I've got to write an essay. What am I going to say? But you're right, if you mean by the book, my complete handwritten and illustrated edition of Nan Shepard's The Living Mountain, which that came entirely from me. But then I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't worked on the St. John's Bible, because I wouldn't have understood books or I wouldn't have known how wonderful it is to write text, know, on consecutive days over 200, well, my living mountain is 232 pages with about 80 paintings in it. So it was a huge project. Laura Edralin (30:52) Wow. Laura Edralin (30:59) And what kept you going? Because I can only imagine that something, a project on that scale in terms of length of time that it's going to take you. I know you'd already had the sort of discipline of doing a project that was lengthy, but when it's self-motivated, I always feel like it's a real struggle to stay on it because there's nobody expecting you to do it. Susie Leiper (31:13) Okay. No, you're absolutely right. And I would work chapter by chapter. I I liked having the project in the background so that if I didn't have a job or an exhibition or anything like that, I could just do that on an afternoon or something. And I plotted along like that. And then when COVID came, I think I must not have worked on the book for about a year. And I suddenly thought, you know, this is the project for me. I was very lucky I had access to my studio. So I just spent, you know, four or five months completing the whole thing. Laura Edralin (31:52) Wow. And is that just a single book? Is that something that people can access...? Susie Leiper (31:59) No, it is a single book and bound, it was bound in Glasgow by a wonderful bookbinder called Gillian Stewart, who totally got me and it's bound in six volumes, each with their own box. I won't go into it, but there was a publishing proposal, but I'm afraid that didn't come to fruition. You never know, maybe it will one day. Laura Edralin (32:20) Yeah, when that time is right. And so two other things I was going to ask you. One, you do a lot of speaking at events and talks, and you've got one coming up, I know, at the class event. Is there something that you particularly enjoy about these speaking opportunities? Susie Leiper (32:22) Yes. Yes. I feel guilty that I'm not a teacher or that I've never, well, I have taught a little bit, but I really ought to be passing on my skills. But in the end, the way my life has turned out or through my personality, my way of broadcasting calligraphy is through exhibitions and through talks, giving talks. And I think the nice thing about giving talks, I just love assembling those PowerPoints that are full of illustrations. It's like writing a book. And I like that. You know, I gather all the illustrations together on the topic or photos and then I upload them onto the PowerPoint, then I write about them and I think about them. And it all becomes a story and I love doing that. Laura Edralin (33:17) That's lovely. It's, yeah, again, it's this sort of echo of the book of the stories of the, you know, these little projects that you can compile and piece together. That's lovely. And finally, what are you working on at the moment? Are you doing anything in particular? Have you got some projects in there in the pipeline? Susie Leiper (33:23) I'm embarking on, or I've already been working on it for about six months in the background, but I'm about to start actually doing it, a huge project for one of the Oxford colleges. I've been doing all the diplomas that I do seem to have come in these last few months for the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Wardie Church Memorial Book. And then I'm part of a three man exhibition in a gallery in Fife in March, and that's quite a lot of preparation. It's not just painting the paintings, there's all the background stuff you have to do for social media and captions and photos and whatever. And then I'm part of another exhibition later in the year with our artist book group, which will just be artist books. So I want to make some new ones of those. Laura Edralin (34:26) Wow, endless projects, I bet. Susie Leiper (34:27) ...and I've got the book to prepare and I'm writing an article so I'm never short of things to do. Laura Edralin (34:32) We're keeping you busy, we're keeping you busy. With the diplomas, do you mean that you're doing the sort of certificates? Susie Leiper (34:35) Yes. No, the diploma comes to me ready printed. They're quite large. Then I have to write the name on one line. And then for the physicians, I have to write the date in Latin, which takes two lines. So 135 times of writing, Viginti duo, diae mensis aprilis, anno domini, dispis melecimo, viginti quatuor, you know, but you you just do it. Laura Edralin (34:45) Right. You do do it, yeah, but that does come with years of training. think you're right. goes back to knowing. Susie Leiper (35:13) Yeah. Most of them I can't read, so you're constantly looking backwards and forwards so you don't make a mistake. Laura Edralin (35:21) Yes, also something that I think a lot of calligraphers suffer with is the idea that actually when you're not focusing on the spelling that's kind of good because you're focusing on the R and you're not thinking about handwriting, you're thinking about crafting intentional sort of strokes and shapes but then it's so easy to spell something wrong. Susie Leiper (35:31) Go. Yes. Yes, especially when you get to the end of usually a commission in the last line and you're sort of thinking, nearly finished and you go and make a mistake. Yeah, that's why the St. John's Bible was written or one of the reasons why it was written on vellum because you can actually scrape out the mistake and then re-form the surface of the vellum and you'd almost not notice. If there was a, if you missed out a whole line and then you'd written about 20 lines after that, there was another... ...way of mending that and that was writing the line in the margin at the bottom and then somebody would paint a little chain with a bird poking that line into the correct place. Laura Edralin (36:21) That's incredible. Is Vellum... what is Vellum? Susie Leiper (36:26) Vellum is calfskin or it can be goatskin or sheepskin, which is repaired. I mean, there's only one vellum producer in the whole country now, William Cowley's, and they make vellum for drum skins or for parchment for writing on. Laura Edralin (36:28) It's calf skin. Okay. Okay, so not easy to come by. We won't use it every day. How do you stay on tasks? If you've got this variety of projects coming up, do you time block out for each one so you can completely get into that mindset for that project in terms of the script and the materials and the tools that you need or do you prefer to kind of mix throughout the day to keep a bit of variety coming in? Susie Leiper (37:13) Well, I think because I've worked freelance for almost 40 years, I'm quite good at time management, especially when the children came along, you you just had to get on with the job and you learn about your own self. I know that I'm most productive in the morning. I'm just a morning person, always have been. So I will do the hard things first, the writing or painting usually in the morning and then in the afternoon, well, I might carry on with that. But if I've got computer work to do, like creating a PowerPoint or writing an article, I'll do that in the afternoon. Laura Edralin (37:46) Wow, that's brilliant. So actually, really getting to know yourself and where your energy is each day. Susie Leiper (37:53) Yes, yes. Now remember somebody making that point about 10 years ago to somebody who was struggling and wanted to have a job and also wanted to create and she said to her, work out when you're most creative and if it's the evening, then take a day job. If it's the daytime, then take a bar job in the evening. And that was good advice. I just know that after four o'clock, I'm pretty useless. You can do things, I can do things on the computer because they're always you can always correct them. Laura Edralin (38:12) That's brilliant. Yeah. Susie Leiper (38:25) Whereas if you've gone and messed up your writing at four in the afternoon, that's no good. Laura Edralin (38:29) Absolutely, you know not to start that lengthy project at that point. Susie Leiper (38:31) No, And I think some of us used to find that quite frustrating on the Bible project because Donald Jackson wasn't a first thing in the morning person and he didn't really start till after coffee and then he would still be wanting to work at six o'clock. Laura Edralin (38:45) Yeah, it doesn't match us. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that is the tough thing about team projects, I guess. There's pros and cons to both being able to work in your own time zones. Oh, Suzy, thank you so much for talking to me today. I feel like I've stepped into your studio and I'm really looking forward to seeing you in person as well at the next class event. Susie Leiper (38:48) No. Yes, yes, yes. Laura Edralin (39:12) I will share all your details in the show notes. But if anybody is interested in finding out more about Suzy, visit www.susyleeper.com or you can connect with her on Instagram at Susie Leeper. that is L-E-I-P-E-R. All the links will be added to the show notes, as I say. But thank you so much for joining me for the Life of Letters. It's been lovely talking to you. Susie Leiper (39:42) Thank you, Laura. Very interesting. Bye. Laura Edralin (39:43) Thank you See you soon. Bye. Laura Edralin (39:48) That's it for this episode of the Life of Letters. Thank you so much for listening and joining me on this exploration of the written word. Please subscribe, leave a review or share it with a fellow lettering enthusiast. And for all the details to connect with us on Instagram or drop us an email, check out the show notes. A huge thank you to my producer, Heidi Cullop, for ensuring this podcast reached your ears. And finally, to all the guests featured in this series. Go check them out.