Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Life of Letters, a podcast exploring the history and future of calligraphy, handwriting, type design, and all things lettering. Join me, Laura Edrilyn, a London based calligrapher, as I connect with artists, historians, stationary experts and more from around the world to uncover the stories behind the letters and the journeys of those who bring them to life.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I'm delighted to be speaking with Kestrel Montes today. Kestrel is the creative force behind Ink Me this, a boutique offering calligraphy services and innovative products for calligraphers. She is the founder of Learned Calligraphy.com, an online school providing global access to top instructors, and nibtique, a network connecting clients with professional calligraphers and engravers. Kestrel is perhaps best known for developing tools and resources that support the calligraphy community. A dedicated educator and leader, Kestrel serves as both an instructor and board member of IAM PETH International association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting, which is why it's shortened to I am Perth and is a calligraphy master's crew member as well. Kestrel. This is a little bit like meeting one of my heroes of calligraphy. So a huge welcome to the Life of Letters podcast. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much for having me. I am just sitting over here at my desk like you are.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: It's lovely to feel like it's not just you right in your little pocket of the world trying to learn some calligraphy and trying to get that practice in. I mean, the beauty of online and being able to connect virtually is incredible. So, yeah, thank you.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Absolutely. Years ago, who would have thought we'd make such good friends and personal connections with people all over the world without ever actually meeting them in person. But we feel like we have, right?
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Totally. It just brings us all a little bit closer together, which is. Which is a real plus. Yes.
Firstly, can you tell us a little bit about how you began your journey into the world of calligraphy?
[00:02:16] Speaker C: I began my journey into calligraphy very late. I wish I had come across calligraphy like some of my friends when they were teens or a lot younger. I was coming on 40 when I even discovered the world of calligraphy.
My husband Francisco and I had a laser engraving business making mostly personalized gifts and, you know, awards and corporate kind of recognition pieces using large industrial laser engravers. And I found that my favorite part of doing that was arranging different fonts into combinations of styles and playing with the alternate ligatures that some fonts offered and just really was fascinated by the world of graphic options and computer fonts. And that led me to wanting to design a font myself, because sometimes I was like, oh, I wish that it would do this at the end of the word instead of something else. Or I wish it had a J that was not hanging so low. Whatever it was. I started wanting to be able to make my own computer fonts, which led me to purchasing software and teaching myself how to program computer font files, except that I didn't know how to do any calligraphy at all. So then I realized, well, okay, backtrack some. And I started looking at calligraphy and how to do that and bought my first nibs and had no idea what I was doing and sort of just stumbled through figuring it out for the first couple of years. At that point, there really weren't a lot of online resources that were easy to find at least. Right. You, yeah, you had to know what you were looking for, which was difficult if you didn't know what you didn't know. Right. But anyway, within a couple of years, I mean, I won't bore all of the blow by blow, but just first started trying to figure things out by watching online and stumbling upon little clips here and there. This was also at a time when Instagram only allowed 10 second videos. And so everybody was speeding things up incredibly fast and not able to show very much of what they were doing or how they were doing it.
But, you know, through just trial and error and gleaning as much information as I could, kind of figured things out to a point of being able to actually write and mimic different writing styles before I knew anything about the real traditional world of calligraphy. Right. That came later. I think like many people, I first stumbled upon kind of modern styles because that's what you see in a lot of places, especially on products in stores and pillows and greeting cards and all the things that have modern script on them. Right. So that's what I came upon first and then eventually dove into the world of. Of traditional scripts, copper plate and Spencerian and then italicanden and on and on and on. Right. There are so many things that we need to learn and so much more to learn still.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. That's fascinating and incredibly encouraging that given the sort of the. How many things that you've got going on, that it started not, you know, from the age of 12 or whatever, you know, or that that kind of, you know, practice hasn't been a 30 year process or anything like that, and that people can feel hopefully comforted by that, that it doesn't have to have been something that, yeah, the seed was planted many years ago. Although probably looking back there would have been some sort of spark of interest or creative something going on.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: I'm certainly envious of my friends who started young. I wish I had come upon it earlier. And you can definitely see in the, you know, when people make something look so easy, it's just a matter of how much they've practiced. It shows how many hours and hours and hours and months and years that they have trained that muscle memory and trained their eye and, and really there's no substitute for practice. So I do consider myself a baby calligrapher in, in the world of calligraphy and I think I always will consider myself a baby calligrapher because there's just always so much more to learn, always so much more we can train our hands and our eyes about.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And actually that's a huge kind of strength of yours. And you know, I know there'll be a lot of people who are so grateful for you for sharing this and kind of expanding and growing the awareness and letting people learn and all the different platforms and communities that you've set up. You know, you've got your, your fingers in so many pies or nibs in so many inkwells, I should say. But I'm so impressed by how you facilit all of these things. You know, I can just about handle, you know, a couple of workshops a month and an online club, but, you know, let alone different, completely different communities and businesses. Yes, they've got the running theme of calligraphy, but actually a product based business, a service based business. How do you balance everything?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Gosh, well, there's a constant telling myself that I need to chill out and stop creating more projects for myself, but I kind of, I just find that there's so much I want to do and I get excited about the ideas and then I don't want to not do them. And so one thing just sort of leads to another. I, I say in my business class that, you know, I've really learned my lesson to never say, oh, I will never do XYZ, because if you had asked me 15 years ago if I would ever own my own business, I would have said. And I know that I did say, hell no. I like to just have a paycheck that comes to me and I don't have to worry about where the money came from for that paycheck. So, you know, I didn't set out to do any of this at all.
And I just have been so intrigued by the world of calligraphy and so inspired by the community.
And what we didn't mention was that former life in my past career I was a public school educator. And so I think that part of the path for me with calligraphy has been a natural blending of those two careers. You know, I, I very much am a teacher at heart and have been my entire life. That was my original career and majored in Spanish and math and then for my bachelor's and then got a master's degree in educational leadership and spent my quote, unquote real job life working in the high school and junior college level and then for the state of California for a while as a consultant and always in public education.
So then when I started doing independent business as a creative, both in the laser engraving and then the hand engraving and calligraphy worlds, it just to me is an obvious bridge to pull in the educational side.
So.
And also I've had just the greatest fortune of becoming friends with such amazing artists and such good instructors themselves that it has just given me the opportunity to help put them out in front of people and give all of us the access to learning from them.
You know, even, even living here, an hour away from San Francisco, which is a major, international, well known city, you would think that I would have had a lot of opportunities here to learn in person, workshops from amazing artists, and that's not really been the case.
Yes, amazing artists come to this area occasionally, but you know, it has to all align. The first, you know, you have to wait for one to come, then you have to hope it works with your own schedule and then you've got to travel a little bit. It's just difficult. So once I got far enough along in things, it just seemed like the right thing to do and the natural next step to put my computer and educational skills to work in bridging that gap of connecting students to these amazing artists that I had had the fortune of learning from myself and, or becoming friends with over, over the years.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah, lovely. It's like, it's, it's building that network, right? And the more people that get to teach, the more people they get to impact. The more people that, you know, get to learn, the more amazing work that comes out of it. It's, it's.
Yeah, it's a cyclical thing.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: I gotta let the dog out.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, please do.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: No, that's important.
So a big love for me is seeing historical scripts blending with sort of modern styles and lettering and this sort of complementing different art forms as well, like, you know, painting and Engraving and all sorts of different techniques. So how do you find upholding the sort of traditional standards of calligraphy with so many sort of modern approaches? Do you enjoy that sort of blending, or do you now you've moved, or maybe not moved, but stepped away from probably more of the modern scripts that you started with, do you see a big difference kind of coming through?
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Well, I think that what you realize about calligraphy once you get started and if you really keep investigating and keep trying to learn, is that there is so much more to learn than you originally realize when you first stumble into the art. And so I think that we need to recognize and appreciate modern calligraphy for expanding the general population's awareness of calligraphy and piquing their interest, getting them started.
What I don't like to see is when people stop there.
I, I, I don't like to see that people start with modern calligraphy and then don't keep going. There's so much more to learn. And even if aesthetically you are mostly drawn to modern calligraphy, that's fine. I just still really push students to learn the classic hands as well. Learn copper plate, learn Spencerian, learn italic hand. Because even though you may still later only use modern in your projects, in your personal world, you will notice that learning those classic hands has an incredible impact on your skill development, your nib control, your ability to really show your techniques and show how the forms are following enough of a structure and a rule base that it adds an elevated elegance to your hand. And I think that that's where modern gets criticized is if you approach modern with the attitude of, oh, it doesn't matter what I do.
That's what modern means, is that I can just do anything I want and there's no rules here. You can see it in the writing. Compared to somebody who does apply some basic level of foundational skills and foundational rules of calligraphy to their modern, it will look much more refined. So I have a great appreciation for modern, and I also have a great appreciation for the traditional hands. Yeah, so it's that whole thing of that you need to learn the rules in order to break them. I love that.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's, it's really interesting, actually, because it's very easy to fall into your stride and kind of just get, okay, this is who I am now. This is my style. This is, you know, I, I don't want to deviate because I've kind of not perfected in any way. But I think you can really get in your head about, well, If I. I have to learn something that I don't know, that's a really vulnerable space because I'm not going to be very good at it. So you, you know, when you're learning a new style, you're sort of back. Sort of back to basics. It may be a two. Two steps behind again, but as you say, it just builds and builds and builds those foundations and creates such an exciting, you know, world of. Of creativity and. And opens up so much more for your. Your sort of repertoire.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: Yes. And, you know, people will ask, like, where. What should I start with? What should I learn first? And some calligraphers have very definite opinions about which hand and in which order you should learn things. I personally always answer that question by saying, you need to learn first the style that appeals to you most, the one that you think is the most beautiful, because that is what will motivate you to practice. It's what will motivate you to want to learn it and want to be able to do it. And the other thing that happens with learning different calligraphy hands is that, you know, the first one is very hard and it will be frustrating, probably. And then you practice, you have to put the time in. You have to practice with purpose, because it is like an athlete training. You are building muscle memory. So it's not just putting time in, it's putting quality time in. Otherwise, you're just teaching your hand poor muscle memory. So really, learning from vetted, vetted instructors, I think is crucial.
The other thing that starts happening, though, as you learn more and more styles, it becomes easier and easier to pick up on them, because now your eye is more trained on seeing the nuances of different styles, seeing how strokes must have been created. Just because you understand the tools so much better, you understand their behavior, and then knowing how to get it from what you're seeing to what your hand is doing, we have to be able to see it first before we can get our hand to do it. The more scripts you learn, the more styles that you learn. Each one becomes easier to learn than the previous one. And that's when it really becomes exciting. If you stick with it for long enough to where you can learn another style without it being as arduous.
I'm not going to say it becomes, like, super easy all of a sudden, and you can just suddenly do a new hand each day, like, yeah, don't take me wrong there. You still have to practice, and you still have to work at it, and some of us more than others. But you do start to notice Kind of a domino effect in being able to do more, more easily, just as you build up over time. So I'm always like, don't give up. Keep going, keep going, keep going. But definitely start with the hands that appeal to you the most.
However, don't shy away from the hands that you don't find particularly beautiful either. I'm not going to say which ones, I'm not going to say which ones, but there are certainly calligraphy styles that I don't like that I don't find beautiful. However, I still challenge myself to learn them because I understand at this point what I was just talking about that, like, each thing builds on the other, and when you learn one style, it will improve and enhance the other one that you knew.
And so, for example, with Spencerian, Spencerian is a very light hand. You're not putting pressure on downstrokes, except in very specific places.
So it trains you to have a light touch.
Then when you go back to modern or you go back to copper plate, after Spencerian, your shade strokes will be more delicate and more elegant because of that training of a light touch that hands like Spencerian or Italian hand give you.
So each hand you learn, not only does it improve your general skills and give you more options of, you know, style variations of letter forms, but it also just improves your other hands that, you know, and it just becomes this whole big spaghetti mess of, you know, everything impacting something else.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I guess that's. It's reminding me of playing the piano or something where you've kind of got maybe a lot of the finger placement or you kind of. It's you. You know, some of the setup, you know, that foundational kind of rules that maybe you need. But actually, each piece of music is going to teach you something completely different. They might have more complicated notes or structures or, I don't know, forgotten all my music training, but it's. It's that same process that maybe once you've. The more music you learn, the more different music you learn, you know, especially when it's different genres. You've got jazz, you've got this, you've got that. So it's going to all give you new ways of being able to play and. And adding to your skills. So it's. Yeah, very. Makes complete sense.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: I think that's what is so intriguing and appealing to me about calligraphy, because calligraphy as an art, such a blend of technical skill and artistic expression and creativity.
So you get really, that blend of.
Of both sides of the brain or both worlds in terms of personality, style, it's. It takes enough like technical skill and that it intrigues me from that perspective.
And I get very into kind of how the tools work and, and how the tines operate and whatever that side of things as well. So.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Well, you've segued almost beautifully because I wanted to ask you about the, a little bit more about your, your product lines because you have a shop, you, you service the world of calligraphers as well in terms of kind of problem solving really, for the modern day calligraphers.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: In Ink Me, this, my whole kind of philosophy has been to not offer things that you can just get on Amazon or somewhere else easily. Because if we can get something easily, then I don't need to worry about it.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. People will go there anyway. Yeah.
[00:25:29] Speaker C: But products also kind of happened accidentally. So when I was starting calligraphy and doing calligraphy myself, I found I was having trouble finding a calligraphy pen that was comfortable to me. I like a thicker grip even on my, you know, pencils or pens. I like adding a, a grip holder to things, and it's difficult for me to hold something that's too thin. So when I was starting calligraphy myself, I was trying to find a calligraphy pen that was more comfortable to me. And at that time, there just weren't as many options as there are now. And with, well, I should say there weren't as many options as there are now without spending like 250 or $300 on a custom made handmade holder. Right.
So I was trying to find something. I had bought multiple different things that were all fine, but I was still searching for something that worked better for me. And Francisco knew this.
And Francisco is very much a workshop guy. So he started making a couple of calligraphy pens for me. And he would call me over to the lathe while he was in process of turning them and say, here, try this. And I'd like try to pretend like I was holding it while it's still attached to the lathe and, and give him guidance. Like, no, it's. That's too thick right there or that's too thin or it needs to transition thinner here. And people started asking me like, well, where did you get that? I'm like, oh, well, my husband made it for me. And they say, well, can he make me one? And so now making holders started again. Not setting out to do it, not intentionally at that time, Ink Me, this did exist as a business, but it focused on the custom ink stamps.
So it expanded from just the custom Ink stamps, which we still make into also calligraphy pens. And then the fonts that I made and offered for download, which, gosh, I've made like 15 fonts, I think. But it's been years. It's kind of my retirement dream to sit, to just sit around and make computer fonts again, because I really enjoy making them, but they are quite time consuming and tedious to do. So I haven't made one in a very long time.
And then when it comes to all the other products that we've either designed from scratch and produced ourselves or partnered with other manufacturers to develop, every single one of them has come from my own calligraphy needs.
I always feel like there's gotta be some, something or some method or some tool that could help make some aspects of this calligraphy world easier. If I'm struggling to find the right tool for myself or the right product for myself, then that's when I notice that there's a gap, there's a hole in the product market for us as calligraphers. So a lot of times a product is, well, it's born out of some need that I have at my desk and then it develops through kind of both of us trying to design something and then trying to figure out, well, what can we actually in reality to make. The holders are a hundred percent handmade, start to finish. The resin is poured for us by a dear friend of ours.
Or if they are made from a combination of resin and wood burl, the, the burl is cut and stabilized by him. They are from scratch all the way to final piece handmade here in California.
So those are, those are, those are unique in, in that they are not a mass produced item. They still aren't.
They're very much Francisco's art pieces. Yeah, like our art pieces that we make, they take a lot of time and practice and skill. I think that, you know, being a calligrapher and doing this work myself gives me a good insight into what's actually needed and wanted and useful with the engraver. It was a totally different motivation.
When I started engraving, it was very difficult to figure out what to use. At that time, people who were doing engraving were either secretive about the tools and supplies that are used or they were very willing to share the information, but they weren't out there on social media to be found or seen or known about or asked by us.
And so a friend of mine, Nina Sandalin, who's here in the Bay Area, we were both, you know, doing calligraphy. We, we, we were both sharing information with each other. And we were both wanting to get into engraving but struggling to figure out what to use again, just wasn't known. And the people who would post on Instagram, for example, showing engraving would never show their tools. So then started testing a whole bunch of different tools started.
I bought, oh, gosh, I don't even know how many, I think like $3,000 worth of equipment from all different manufacturers, testing different ones, and settled on the one. And then I worked with that manufacturer and said, look, you've been in business for 30 years creating this equipment for the dental industry, but we are using it for calligraphy engraving on glass and metal and ceramic and all these other items. And I was talking to the owner of the company and he was confused at first. I had to really explain to him.
And, and then, and I just said to him, I said, look, I want to partner with you. I want to change a couple things minor about your product, and I want to put it out there as a calligraphy engraving tool, mostly with the goal of just making it easier for people to know what to get and what was actually a quality machine that wasn't going to die on them within a year and end up costing them more in the long run and, and save them from what, you know, Nina and I struggled for a long time to figure out, again, need the. Seeing the. Need seeing the hole in the community, in the market.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: So that's incredible. And I think it's so valuable to people who are exploring calligraphy, thinking about it, whether it's a, a kind of passion or a business, that they are finding those tools and finding ones that are, you know, tried, tested, and coming from somebody who can firsthand say, yeah, this is good, this works. So, yeah, it's, it's brilliant knowing that you're, you're out there and you ship worldwide and we'll make sure that all the details are in the notes. Absolutely.
What is your particular sort of passion within all these different services that you.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: Offer with learn calligraphy.com that's my blending again of my two life worlds of education and calligraphy, where I just get excited about all that there is to learn and wanting to make sure to promote quality instruction.
I am a bit of a snob when it comes to the craft of teaching, having been a professional educator for my quote unquote, real career. But it comes from a place of really valuing education and valuing the skill and the craft of instruction and recognizing that you can be the most skilled person at doing something and still not be able to Teach it worth a lick.
And conversely, you can be good at something and be able to teach it if you know how to teach well and your students can do it better than you can. Even so, that's where my passion when it comes to learn calligraphy.com platform is when it comes to Niptique. You know, Niptique was something that I started that was also a brainchild with Nina Sandalon. But we were just talking about how hard it is as a calligrapher and an engraver to put yourself out there in front of clients and get seen, because the platforms that exist for that, such as Wedding Wire or the Knot or these other platforms that calligraphers often will list themselves on, you know, they also have florists and photographers and caterers and bands and all the other things that go into weddings. And they're very much focused on wedding work, which is only a sliver of what calligraphy entails. And some of us don't even like working on wedding work. Right.
And so we were noticing a real hole in the ability to market ourselves in that way. And so Niptique, honestly, I.
I don't focus on Niptique. It. It was sort of a hobby side project. It still is very much going and active and growing, but sort of on its own.
It is a platform with now well over a thousand artists on it. And word is spreading more and more with the agencies that hire for, you know, events and also, you know, the brands and also individual clients that it's a place where you can go and find calligraphy artists and engraving artists without having to weed through stationers and online platforms.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: A huge thing for me when I first started was just seeing that there are calligraphers in all sorts of different places and doing different things with it. And there isn't just the wedding calligraphy, as you said. There's lots and lots of different streams and you don't have to fall into to one of those. Can I ask you very quickly before, before I let you go, what do you think? What would you like to see in terms of the future of maybe. This is a really massive question. The future of calligraphy and engraving.
[00:38:07] Speaker C: That's a tough question.
I'm. I'm not usually so philosophical about these things. I just sort of sit here and make stuff that's a big one to end on.
You know, I just, like I said earlier, I just hope that people keep learning more and more about calligraphy and keep expanding, and then, you know, it branches you off to painting and it branches you into gilding, and it just never ends.
It just never ends. So I think it's just such a beautiful art style, and we can make gifts for friends. We can make people happy seeing their name in a beautiful design. Right.
I'm just happy to be part of this community when it comes to my own artwork. I'll say that. Now what excites me the most are the clients who give me a sense of what they are looking for so that I have some general direction and then leave the rest to me, because I always see client work at this point as a personal challenge of my own skills. So I always try to break out of my comfort zone with any piece that I'm doing and push my skills. So I don't do a lot of commissions now. I'm very particular about which ones I accept because that's. That's what I'm looking for in client work at this point.
And I.
I think that that's exciting.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: So that's brilliant. And, you know, honestly, I think it's just so exciting to hear from someone who has so much going on in the calligraphy world and can see it from so many different perspectives.
So, really, just a huge thank you from me for talking to me today. I honestly feel like I've met one of my heroes and I could continue asking all of those questions that popping up in my mind, but we'd be here for hours. So, yeah, it's been an absolute honor to have you on the podcast.
[00:40:40] Speaker C: Well, you're very, very sweet, and I'm very flattered, and thank you for asking me again. Like I said at the beginning, I just feel like I'm just over here sitting at my desk trying to make all this happen as well. I am just like everybody else, trying to get onto paper what I am seeing in my mind. And more times than not, it. It doesn't happen.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: And.
[00:41:10] Speaker C: It'S. It's just a process, and I feel so fortunate to be a part of all of it. So thank you for having me.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Oh, you're very, very welcome. And if anybody's interested in finding out more about Kestrel, then visit Inkmethis.com you can also connect with her at ke@inkmethis, and we'll put all this in the show notes, but you're also on Instagram as well, with some beautiful, beautiful things popping up all the time. So go and check Kestrel out. Thank you so much for joining the Life of Letters.
[00:41:43] Speaker C: Have a fabulous rest of your day.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the podcast, please subscribe, leave a review or share it with a fellow lettering enthusiast. And for all the details to connect.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: With us, check out the show notes.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: 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.
