Hi everyone, my name is Melissa Hutchins and I'm excited to talk to you all today about how my soft skills kickstarted my career in product management. I'm also going to touch on some very valuable information I've learned along the way that people will not tell you in the job description. So a little bit about myself, I am a product manager and have been at Expedia Group for about four years now. I lead product within the lodging shopping space for Expedia.com, which is just one of the very many travel brands under the Expedia Group umbrella. I am also a product mentor for students who are mostly college age and really interested in looking to learn more about product management. On my education I graduated with a bachelor's degree in both business economics and marketing as well. So today I'm going to cover a couple of different things. I'm going to start off with telling you a little bit about how I got into product management and my journey there. Next I'm going to talk to the core PM skills, so those soft skills that are really necessary for PMs in their own day-to-day work. Next I'm going to talk about the inevitable truths of being a product manager and just what it really means. Then I'm going to go into mindset and really how important building the right mindset is for a product manager. So how did you get into product management? Long story short, it all started out of curiosity. I had little to no knowledge about product management, what it was, what product managers did when I was first introduced to it, but I was very interested and so I researched and went to a networking event called Who Wants to Be a Product Manager, which was advertised for only internal Expedia Group employees, but being the hungry post-graduate I was at the time looking for experience, trying to get my foot in the door. I managed to sneak my way into the event thinking kind of what's the worst that could happen here and just came really early and ended up checking people in and out of my name at the bottom of the list and got a front row seat, so it all worked out. By the end of the event I went up to all of the speakers, but one in particular that I wanted to to engage with, he was the SVP of Product Management at Expedia and I told him my story, I told him a little bit about why I was there, how I got there, and he thought it was absolutely hilarious and I asked him for coffee and he said yes and so two weeks later after grabbing a cup of coffee and talking a little bit more I had thought he forgot about me, followed up with him, like probably five different emails, this guy totally forgot about me, but to my surprise was emailed by my previous manager basically saying there was a role that came up and the guy that you met with, he wants you to fill the position and so here's the job description, are you interested? And so I read through the job description after I already had the role basically and this is a very, this was a very unconventional way of getting my start as a product manager, but I really wouldn't have had it any other way because it really taught me an extremely valuable lesson that I have as a guiding principle in not only my career but my life which I'll talk a little bit more later too. So now that you've heard the journey into product management, what are these core soft skills that I used and used to this day for successful product managers? So starting off with communication, being able to master the art of communicating not only communicating but over communicating exactly what you're trying to build, what needs to be done, what are your goals and always in these types of communications seeking clarity over comfort. So making sure any of the inconsistencies even if it's uncomfortable are cleared out, these types of seemingly uncomfortable moments are often the ones that have the greatest impact in the end. And by staying silent in moments of uncertainty, there's a very good chance that it could bite you and your team later down, later down the line. Organization, again ensuring your team members know what needs to be done and why we're doing it. Research, curiosity is so key for product managers and living in your user's reality is going to be a very key way to build the best product for your users. You may have a different perspective from your targeted users, but by living in their reality, it's going to ensure you're doing the best thing for them. And lastly, execution. So having a bias for action and really stepping up being the one to lead for your team and what the needs of your team are. So some of the truths about being a product manager that I personally learned along the way and things that I didn't know when I first became a product manager. So there is a lot of ambiguity. I want to strongly emphasize this. As a product manager, you are ultimately the one responsible for whether or not your product is successful or whether it's a failure. So with that, there will always be unexpected changes, challenges, whether it's in the broader organization or whether it's specifically within your team. It requires your guidance and leadership to be able to move forward. Also, if something needs to be done, it's your job at the end of the day to make sure it gets prioritized. Regardless if it's your specialty or not, you are the one who needs to ensure that it gets done. Because you are the main connector across your team and across the various rules of your team. So really pushing for alignment across all of the stakeholders involved to make sure you're avoiding any type of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Another truth that I came to know was that you are comfortable or you will need to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. So people will come to you for a very wide range of issues or problems that may not even be in your space. But with that being said, you're not going to have all of the answers. And it's okay to not have all of the answers. But being able to take action to communicate with those who do have the answers is extremely important. You need to also be okay with saying no, especially when you're in the ideation phase, which is kind of the phase of figuring out what exactly your product's going to look like, what are the requirements? There are going to be a lot of different ideas thrown around. Some of them are going to be good ideas and some of them may not be in the best interest of your users. So you have to be able to prioritize what's going to be ultimately best for your users.  Even though it feels daunting or intimidating, there are most likely multiple people that have that same question. So you need to be able to take the initiative to get those questions out of the way and achieve clarity there. Also, this is a point that's very relevant if you're a PM within tech. Even if you don't consider yourself very technical, which I personally didn't when I started as a product manager, you are curious to learn more about those concepts that are going to be very relevant and learning about how they will impact your product. So now moving on to mindset, which is one of my favorite topics and how important of a role having the right mindset is going to be for your product management career. So cultivating the right mindset, there are really two concepts in order to do this. The first one being curiosity, which I've talked to in some of the previous slides, as well as growth. So switching from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, these two components are so important to have an overall successful, really setting yourself up for success with mindset. So curiosity, getting a little bit more in depth here. Expanding your network is important, very, very relevant to not only the work that you're immediately doing, but just really expanding your network of influence throughout the organization. And this is often done through pushing beyond what in your mind is comfortable and really pushing those comfort zones. Taking a genuine interest in the work of others is a core component to this. This not only strengthens relationships, but also builds respect and trust of your team members and other coworkers. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten told by one of my engineers that he or she gained a lot of respect for me by taking an extra step of wanting to learn more about something that I didn't necessarily need to, but having that interest really gave much more of a respect amongst the team. Also creating an environment that not only shows your curious, but spreads curiosity across the team. And usually from what in my own experience, curiosity is often contagious. And so by asking a lot of questions, encouraging feedback, asking for the other team members' perspectives on maybe a pitch that you're going to make or really getting their thoughts. And this plays into having a very diverse set of perspectives in the room. So having a lot of feedback, having a lot of diversity amongst the decisions being made, or that play into the decisions being made, I think ultimately provides for the best customer experience. A real world example of this is something that I've, or a conversation I've had with so many of my engineers by asking for a high level explanation. As a product manager, you are the ones representing the product. And so you are the key point of contact for that product. So say you're in a meeting with leadership and they ask you a question that falls outside of the product realm. Even if it's not your specialty or even if you are not the expert, maybe your engineer isn't in that meeting to answer that question. And so being able to provide high level details shows not only that you have a very well-rounded understanding of your own product, but it shows that you made the effort to understand technical concepts and how important they were to your product. So learning equals growth. Here, I want to emphasize that as a product manager, you're going to be wrong. So being able to embrace being wrong as a gift instead of failure is very important and also being open to learning from those whose knowledge and skill sets exceed your own. Striving for progress and not perfection. This is why we have MVPs or minimum viable products is to introduce a product that has a set of requirements enough to be able to test and get an accurate gauge for the success of that product. And lastly, in moments of uncertainty, being able to put yourself in your customer shoes is so, so important because you are their number one advocate. There's nobody that's going to advocate more on your customer's behalf than yourself. So you need to be putting yourself in their shoes because they're always number one in your eyes. An example of this goes to when you're actually testing the product. So test and learn. You've built your product. You're ready to test it. You test it and the initial results were not what you were expecting or were not what you were hoping for. The way to move forward from this starts with first analyzing the data. So going through all of the metrics for success, identifying any gaps that exist or that need to be filled. And by utilizing this data, you learn what worked, what didn't work, what needs to be improved. And then you can continue to iterate based on those learnings to eventually build a better product. You improve the product based on learnings is the key takeaway here. Now, I want to close out my last slide with one of my favorite quotes. And I'm not going to try and talk like Yoda. I would not put you all through that. But he said, you want to know the difference between a master and a beginner. The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried. And I think this is very relevant for growing product managers and learning to embrace failure and discomfort because that at the end of the day is ultimately what's going to make you better. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this information was useful. Please, if you have any questions, I'd love to continue the conversation and hear more from you all. Feel free to also connect with me on LinkedIn. And a big thanks to the Product School for having me today. And until next time.


This paper proposes a new methodology for estimating the undrained shear strength of clay. It combines the CADBoost algorithm with Bayesian optimization to identify the most influential soil parameters in determining the strength of clay. This methodology is then applied to a set of experimental data collected from Finnish clay. The results show that the proposed methodology can accurately estimate the undrained shear strength of clay. Furthermore, the parameter uncertainty can also be taken into account when calculating the strength of clay. This article was authored by Hua Jinyang, Shikue Lu, Yuan Tao Li, and others.


that work is also defined in other branches and a general idea is it has something to do with force into displacement. So, if you have a force applied on to a particle on to a body and if the point of application of the force gets displaced or moves and in the direction in which or at least a component of that displacement is in the direction in which force is applied then we say that work is done. And you can do work from the mechanics point of view by lifting a weight in a gravitational field overcome a force of friction moving a charge in an electric field and many other ways. In thermodynamics we do take work as a primitive because it is defined in other branches of physics. However, since thermodynamics does not concern itself only with work it concerns itself also with the non work interaction that is the heat interaction type. We do not want to create any confusion about the idea of work. So, we will soon define or redefine and come up with a thermodynamic definition, but before that let us take some illustration. So, we know what we are confronting with let us take some situation. Let us say that we have a rod of some length L we are holding it and we are pulling it consider the rod as the system it is under a force F. So, the rod itself is whatever it is pulling the rod is pulling back by a force F the force F we will call the tension in the rod you may even let us keep it with F. And let us say that the person who is applying this force applies it in such a way that the rod gets extended by a distance d l then we say that the small amount of work done d w is F into d and we say that look from the rod point of view F is towards negative x d l is towards positive x. So, may be a correct way is to write d w is minus F d l that is one way of representing this small work interaction. Another way is you can consider a system containing a fluid and let us say we have a stirrer we say this is the fluid thick fluid we put a stirrer. And we try to rotate it by applying a torque tau and say under the influence of tau the stirrer moves by a displacement d theta. So, if this is the way suppose I want to move it clockwise then the torque which is imposed on the stirrer will be in the anticlockwise direction the fluid being discussed tries to enforce a torque. So, that the stirrer is restricted. So, again here we will find this is the work done by our system which is the fluid we may call it the stirrer work. We could have say nowadays many of our gadgets mobile phones cameras have an electrolytic cell say a battery a positive terminal a negative terminal with some electrical potential e across them. And let us say that it is connected to whatever is the gadget and a small charge d q passes can write it if you want small current I current I for a small amount of time d t. Then if we take the battery you can say that the work done by the battery is e d q or if you want you can write it as e i d t. And finally, I cannot complete this without our standard illustration suppose I have a suppose I have a fluid gas or vapor enclosed in a cylinder system arrangement. And let us say that the fluid imposes a pressure p on the piston this area is a then naturally the force on the piston is p into a and there will have to be an opposing force f equals p a to keep the piston in place. But suppose I relax the piston slightly. So, that there is a displace when d x of the piston under the influence of this pressure in that case I can write d w is p into a into d x. But since a into d x is the change in volume of the fluid we write this as p into d. So, now I have here 4 illustrations and you will notice that our 4 illustrations end up with the following thing d w turns out to be of the kind x d y with a plus or minus sign here. A few things to note first we note that there is a sign convention involved sometimes we wrote a positive sign sometimes we wrote a negative sign. Then we should also notice that some work interactions are one way some work interactions are two way for example, take this illustration which is on this slide fluid pressurizing a piston. I can relax the piston let it move slightly out may be by slightly reducing the force f. So, that small movement is possible then my d x will be positive d v will be positive and d w will be positive. But I can also slightly increase this to compress it inside in which case my d x will be negative d v will be negative and d w will be negative. It is a two way work mode and now let me go back look at this battery it can be if it is a typically rechargeable battery which we have in our mobile phones it can be discharged making the mobile phone ring and allowing us to communicate. But then we get discharged we connected to a charger and the current is made to flow in the other direction and we charge the battery. In one case the i is in positive direction giving you a positive d w when we use the mobile phone during charging i is in the other direction giving you essentially a negative i giving you a minus sign on the d w it is a negative quantity formula remains the same it is the sign of i or sign of d q which changes. So, this also is a two way mode of work what about this I try to stir the fluid one way the torque is opposing it I try to move the fluid in the other way the torque still opposite. So, if d theta is positive torque is in one direction if d theta is negative torque is in the other direction in any case this work interaction will be negative I cannot put the stirrer in the fluid and say fluid you stir the stirrer that is just not possible this is a one way mode of work whereas, this is a two way mode of work and in a similar fashion this expansion of a fluid is a two way mode of work this is important because later on when it comes to a state principle second law this one way and two way modes of work will help us in understanding the third one which at least a few should have noticed by now is often particularly when we have a two way mode of work x is an intensive property and y is an extensive property take for example, this is a two way mode of work p d v. So, x is p it is an intensive property I consider part of this pressure here pressure here is the same. So, it is an intensive property v on the other hand is an extensive property partition into two volume of one part plus volume of the other part is the volume of the whole system. Similarly, I will leave it to you as an exercise to check that in the previous case that of a battery the potential for the voltage of the cell is an intensive property does it depend on the size I can make a small leclanche cell it will give me 2.2 volts I can make a big leclanche cell it will still give me 2.2, but the charge that it can hold the current it can provide will depend on the size. So, the potential difference across the cell terminals is an intensive variable the charge that it can provide for the current that it can provide is an extensive variable when it comes to this one way mode you will notice that neither tau nor d theta or theta are properties of the fluid properties of the fluid will be pressure volume temperature etcetera. You can go back one more step what about here just confirm to yourself that f is an intensive property and l is an extensive property if you take half of it by equilibrium the force would still be f, but the extension of half the rod will be d l by 2. So, f is intensive l is extensive this is also something to be noted. Now, we have to generalize this and we have to generalize this and formalize it and for that we come to the thermodynamic definition. Most of us know from text books that the thermodynamic definition of work is an interaction which can be completely reduced to the raise of a weight in a gravitational field and nothing else, but that that is the text book definition. Although that definition is we will provide a neat operational definition so that we do not fall into any trap. The basic idea is work interaction is something which can be completely reduced to raise of a weight that means weight is nothing but mass in a gravitational field and it is agreed that if I lift something a mass in a gravitational field I am doing work. So, anything which is completely reducible to that must be a work interaction. Now, by completely what do we mean we can use any fully defined device we can idealize for example, we can use friction less pulleys we can use 100 percent efficient electric motors etcetera. That means we can neglect mechanical friction we can neglect mechanical friction we can neglect electrical friction that is ohmic heating and such stuff but no black box allowed. That means you cannot say that look I have a box here in which you do this and this will come out do not ask me what is inside this that is not allowed. You must define your mechanism fully and you can set up simple mechanisms by which any of the first four interactions which we saw can be shown to be equivalent to raise of a weight. But now we will go to the thermodynamic definition we will set up a procedure we will now set up an operational definition finally, we will become our illustration of thermodynamic definition of we set out to answer this question. We say that let us have two systems system a and system b. Let system a execute a process taking it from state a 1 to state a 2 it may be quasi-static it may be non quasi-static does not matter. While doing this interaction with b let the state of b go from b 1 to b 2 let the interaction be I now our questions would be the operational definition should be able to answer the following questions first question is is I work I is work what is its direction what is its magnitude. These are the questions we seek to answer by setting up the operational definition of work. We proceed as follows we remember that the basic idea of work interaction in thermodynamics is something which can be fully converted by defined mechanisms to nothing but the raise of a weight. So, what we do is we take our system a let it go from a 1 to a 2 but instead of b we try to have the same interaction with some contraption which we want to set up that is c 1 this is fully defined contraption that does not change its state that means it executes cycles if at all and all that it does is raise a weight mass say m 1 in a gravitational field I will just say g and raise it not lower it by some height h 1. We try to set up c 1 which is a fully defined contraption that does not change its state that means if at all it executes a process it executes cycles and which does nothing but raise a mass m 1 by a height h 1 in a gravitational field or against a gravitational field g. Now when we try to set up c 1 it is possible or it may not be possible if c 1 is possible to be set up then we come to one conclusion of this definition we say 1 we conclude that I is work then the second thing we say that a does work on this is our sign convention which we formalize as we say work done by a is plus m 1 g h 1 plus m 1 g h 1 plus m 1 g h 1 plus m 1 and work done by b is minus m 1 g h 1 and this is only if c 1 is possible and if c 1 is not possible we will say go to 2 and after this we say end of definition we do not have to go to step 2 because we have already decided that I is work. Now it is possible that we cannot set up c 1 in which case we will try to set up c 2 in a similar fashion we come to step 2 and here we say that look I have this system b which went from state b 1 to b 2 executing our process by having an interaction I with a but I would like to replace this a by c 2 c 2 again a fully defined contraption as in case of c 1 no change in state I try to set up c 2 whose result should only be raise a mass may be m 2 by a height h 2 against a gravitational field g. So, we try to set up or discover or invent c 2 and then we say if c 2 is possible then we come to the conclusion that again we say I is work then we say in this case b does work on a third quantification work done by b is equal to c 1 by b is equal to m 2 g h 2 and work done by a is minus m 1 sorry m 2 g and that is the end of the definition but the definition is not that way complete if c 2 is also not possible then we will go to step. So, we have made two attempts one to set up c 1 from the point of view of system a a when we try to set up c 1 a still believes that it is interacting with b because it is executing the same process having the same interaction but quietly we have tried to replace b by this contraption c 1 which hopefully can raise a weight if that is not possible then we tried the other way round we said keep a away try to fool b by thinking that it has the same interaction with a executes the same process but a is quietly replaced by c 2 which job is doing nothing but raise a weight in a gravitational field if neither of c 1 or c 2 is possible then we go to step 3 we come to this step is neither c 1 nor c 2 can be set up in that case we say we come to the conclusion the interaction is not possible fully it may be totally a non-work interaction or it may be a combination of some work interaction and some non-work interaction now I will leave it as an exercise to you to show that all four illustrations interactions using our operational definition now we come to a stage where we have defined what is work interaction and now we have to evaluate the work interaction brings us to evaluation of work we note the following there are modes of work interaction they simultaneously so for example the total work may be made up of expansion work plus may be electric work plus may be stirrer work plus depending on the complexity of the system for example you could have a system a fluid electrolytic fluid so it may be doing some e d q type of work simultaneously it could be expanding against a pressure this could be a w electrical there could be a w expansion the p d v type of work there could be a stirrer and the work interaction for the stirrer could be all these things are possible I need paper so we will have to obtain the work interaction by obtaining a sum over various modes or components of work now take a component let us say expansion work we know expansion work is p d v so this is for a process element where a small change in volume takes place but say for a process we will tend to write we can write this but can we evaluate when can we evaluate the answer is if p happens to be a proper function of v throughout the process then we can evaluate it we can evaluate this integral when p is a mathematical function of v that means at least on the p v plane this is a quasi static process if the process is non quasi static we will not be able to evaluate it if for example we take continue we continue with the expansion work suppose I have a say initial pressure is this p 1 initial volume is v 1 let us say final pressure is p 2 final volume is v 2 this is state 1 this is state 2 if the process is quasi static then may be we will have some process like this and then we will be able to evaluate the integral and the integral will be so quasi static process then we have p as a function of v integral p d v is evaluated but if it is a non quasi static process all that I know is I start from here I go to 2 and I do not know what is the path in between non quasi static process w expansion in this particular case is or can be evaluated not be evaluated some of these things will be clear today afternoon when we start solving some exercises on the work interaction so now you notice that at least for the expansion process and instead of p v you could have e q for electrical process and tau theta for the stirring process though for a quasi static process the work done is area under some appropriate curve on an appropriate projection of the state space a different quasi static process would mean a different area so it is very clear that the work depends on the path we do not have to derive anything about it so in thermodynamics we say that work is a path function and now we come to the next thing how did I get rid of that now some definition we define the complexity of a system we have seen that some work modes are one way typical illustration is stirring for a fluid or you take an electrical component which is purely a resistor put a potential across it that is what is known as the ohmic heating heating is unfortunate word there but that is a work interaction which is one way so we consider a system and we say that the number of two way work modes this we count and we say number of two way work modes let me say this is n tu w or n two way now if you take say a simple gas in a cylinder then the only two way work mode it has is expansion and compression and such systems we will call system as a simple for example a gas in a cylinder this is a simple system and the only two way work mode is that of expansion and compression so such a system is sometimes called a simple compressible system you take the rod which we took as an illustration for a simple spring so we say an elastic rod or a spring extension and compression is a the only work mode it has so we can say it is a simple elastic system similarly you have your mobile phones I think all of them are switched off open the back cover take out the battery what type of a system does it have I cannot expand it compress it but I can charge it and discharge it so the only two way work mode that it has is that of electrical charging and electrical discharging so we can say the cell of a mobile phone is a simple electric and in a similar way you can perhaps define a simple magnetic system and many other type of simple systems greater than one we call such systems complex for example an electrolyte which can expand and contract can also be charged and discharge is a complex system there are two numbers of two way work modes charging discharging and compression expansion similarly a spring which is made up of magnetizable and demagnetizable material will be a complex system you can magnetize it and demagnetize it you can compress it and you can expand it so it is a combination of elastic system as well as a magnetic system I inadvertently use the word substance and this is what is quite often used by many textbooks but in thermodynamics we do not really have any special meaning for substance we should always be using the word system because it is always our system you may say a system containing a gas a system containing a fluid a system containing a magnetic material a system containing a dielectric material but it is always the property of a system that we will be talking about we close this discussion by noting that it is possible to have a system such that there is no two way work mode associated with it illustration a system which all of us know the mercury in glass thermometer all of us even kids have seen this we measure temperature typically of us humans how many two way work modes I cannot extend it I cannot compress it I cannot twist it is no two way work mode involved we have used for such systems in thermodynamics let us call such systems as rudimentary systems we can create rudimentary systems for example we take a system containing a gas in a cylinder piston arrangement if we allow the piston free to move then well the expansion work is possible and it will be a simple system but we lock the piston will always be 0 because it is constrained to be 0 we are not allowing the volume to change then this becomes restricted to a rudimentary system and by this method a system can be rudimentary system can be created even from simple systems now that brings us to the end of the basic idea of work interaction defined then we have the operational definition then we looked at various modes of work we looked at the evaluation of work and then finally we looked at complexity of systems depending on the number of two way work modes we will come back to this this is useful at the end of first law and it is particularly useful for when we come to 0 thank you.


So we're starting with this beautiful graffiti that was on the wall Just one bridge up from the Vatican the wall on the Tiber River, and I would see this On my evening walks, and I got pictures of it during the day But I had to go back and get it at night under the street lights And I thought I'd start tonight with the oldest Lettering I'm going to show you tonight, and this is on Ponte Fabricio to the Isola Tiberina and the bridge was built in 62 BC, and there's no indication that the lettering was not done at the time And it was built of tuft and pepperino Whatever that is and faced with travertine marble. So the the inscription is on both sides of the bridge And really lovely. I saw this on my first trip to Rome It's on five itineraries. Do you know the book five itineraries of inscriptions? Essential to go to Rome with that. There's walking tours five different walking tours That will take you by inscriptions that are all listed in their historical stuff and on the island then the night that we went on this last trip to the island It's now the home of a film festival. So this is This sculpture of lettering. Can anybody read this? life is a movie is all it says and It's not the greatest lettering in the world, but it's a nice try, right? I Also had the best cheeseburger. I've had in all of Europe on this island that night I mean I'm really seriously I want to go back for more pictures, but I'm gonna get one of those burgers, too So this is kind of the mascot of the of the issue the last issue and of the show tonight This letter was Well, I'll show you the whole inscription here the this is the dedication to the temple of the genius of Augusta and it was done 7 to 2 BC Did I tell you the bridge was 62 BC that that makes that the oldest okay? So sometimes when they give that big of a range I'm not sure if it means that they're just guessing that it was during that time or that it took five years for the thing to happen but What this says is Mamiya daughter of Publius She was a public priestess to the genius No, I'm sorry She's a public priestess to the genius of Augusta on her own land at her own and at her own expense So this is in the archaeological museum in Naples, which is so rich You want to hear a sad story? Dean Rubino and David Brooks went to Italy to see everything and they went to this museum that day and the epigraphic section was closed I Mean tonight when I came downstairs, there was a red rope across keeping me from using the bathroom on this floor so I had to go up to the zoo, you know and I Wanted to jump over that thing and and so David said he almost had to restrain Dean from Going over the rope and seeing those things, but I send her all the pictures Anyway, everything that's not everything, but most of the stuff that is in the Naples Museum is from Pompeii So all the stuff we're looking at here is from Pompeii and this was You know a temple in Pompeii so you can see here that the The letters themselves when you when you stand back from even that beautiful s which is on the second row Has a flatness to it and you know what it reminds me of is the s in centaur never noticed the e in centaur Perfection, but the s has that flat spot at the bottom in the the flat spot here This reminds me of that, but then when you get up close to it Just unbelievable and the seraphs are so expressive so this is two BC at its latest and These seraphs are just amazing in all of these letters So this is you know more than a hundred years before the Trajan column and also on that same wall This is the eulogy of Romulus and the eulogy of Aeneas And they say this one seven BC to two AD the estimate of time I guess marble also from the from Pompeii the forum in Pompeii and I just love the I love that those caps that straddle Rustic and a condensed Roman and these are beautiful that way Also in the museum in Naples This is a fragment of painted plaster from the Flavian age Flavian age 69 to 96 AD but You know, this is a painted wall in Pompeii, so I'm guessing that it's pretty close to 79 AD And you know the inscriptions and lettering public lettering that you would see Has abbreviations galore so that top line Actually says vote for Trebius an honest man for a delay. So here's the guy's name here's the The post he's running for and he's three letters say he's an honest man apparently and The one on the bottom also a campaign sign Says vote for Marcus Serenius Vatia for a delay Who is worthy of public office and then? ironess ironness Is the last thing we're seeing the guy's name and that means that he recommends him so both of these Beautifully painted on the wall so quick But in that in a nice rustic So we're gonna jump from there to Leon which was in Roman times called Look Dunham and this is the Claudian table, which is the the main The main attraction in the Roman Gallo Museum in Leon and I don't want to sound like a Travel agent, but Leon is a fantastic place for all kinds of stuff and and Inscriptions and lettering is not the least of it Besides the food and fantastic location. There's a brand new museum at the Confluence of the rivers right at the point of the bottom of Leon There's this beautiful new museum that is indescribable really plus the Roman Gallo Museum. So the Claudian table is a speech That Claudius, let's see Claudius was born in Leon in 10 BC one of two emperors that that came from Leon and this speech that he gave was It Just in the Senate in the support of Gallic leaders who were asking for the same rights as Roman citizens And it's presumed that it was successful because the speech has been enshrined this way so this was carved in wax and cast in bronze and Then touched up with a chisel So the fantastic thing about it is that the letters feel kind of silver But it's really just the way it's catching the light that it's mostly cast But if they wanted to they would go back in and touch these things up With the a chisel afterwards Isn't it cool and it's big, you know the fact half of it's missing. Let's go back to the I don't know if this is half of it, but the top part is missing So this is about six feet tall. I'd say something like that. Yeah Well, they were you know, the letters were so small that I I didn't you know I read about that after I'd taken a picture of the You know the the thing on the wall it tells you what's going on So I couldn't see here's here's a close-up and I'm sorry this picture is out of focus, but I do love the the Dancing of that are and the tall I Plus those serifs remember those serifs because we're gonna see them again in a significant spot so Leone the Roman Gallo Museum is at the top of the hill where there's the ruins of the Roman Roman life from that time from 2,000 years ago. There was a forum up at the top of the Hill in fact Wikipedia says there was a Trajan forum But I think that's a mistake but there was a Roman forum at the top of the hill and they've since built a cathedral there and Right down the hill from that is the the Roman Gallo Museum And they have two Roman theaters left and ruins of an amphitheater and they still use the theaters for productions now plays and movies one of them is called Odeon Odeon in Leone and So you take a funicular to get up to the top of that and I got this fantastic picture we got on the funicular first and we were sitting down and then this little family moved in and we're ready for their unwitting portrait, but look at the look at the mouth and the noses of all these three kids and They must have their father's face because that's their mother and this is the little brother And they didn't even know it. I just did this, you know from my from my lap and caught this magic picture It's really so you get up to the top of the hill and here is this cathedral. It's the Notre Dame de Fourvierre Which means let me see I've got that written down here's place It's an inversion of Voo forum or forum Vitas, which is old forum or market So they've named the church on the fact that it was in the location of the forum And it's this magnificent place full of these murals that are all mosaic with gold tiles and there They go on forever the the This mosaic here on the right is the says in the Roman numerals 19 I'm sorry 1852 but all the dates that I found when I researched this say it's 1872 So I think they left out a couple of X's But that one was when it was conceived and built between 1872 and 1885 1884 and these Mosaic murals were done right at the turn of the century. So This I got a little bit of Translation help from Dean Rubino for this. Thank you very much Dean It says at the end of this mortals life work the distinguished painter finds purpose in himself And I think these letter forms are a function of the You know the mosaic process that there there isn't much at all thick and thin so it's Really nearly a monoline Roman And you'll see that throughout the lettering that I'm going to show you from this mural These are signatures so one section of the murals were finished in I Wait 1890 So what that says it has four C's instead of so it started then and this was designed by Charles Lumiere and the mosaic artist was Gilbert and Martin and then later there's one here that says it was finished in 1915 so 1900 okay There's a five. There's a V on the end of this. I don't know if you can see it, but this is the same Inscription or the same mosaic taken from different angles. So you can see how luminous these tiles are so it's on the side here That is the same one and at this point René Martin was doing the mosaic by himself and Lumiere had gotten himself a partner This is George a decoct or however you say it and I should have apologized in advance for all the mispronunciations I'm going to do tonight This is a ceiling all this is mosaic. It's incredible. I took these pictures and didn't Notice whether or not this was cast in metal or carved out of wood But there were two of these over the exits there was one to st. Lucas and one to st. Mark so the inset here is mark From the the same kind of thing down the way and you can still see mosaics like crazy behind it and the lettering Runs across the bottom of all of this so again you see this Nearly monoline Roman they did get the seraphs in though done in mosaic really gorgeous And this is right up the hill I'm right right up the hill from the Roman Gallo Museum which is full of Classic inscriptions as well as lots and lots of What Dean calls every day not so polished writing and carving which is what captivates. So this is a Small Dedication to the three mother goddesses from 201 ad It's formally embedded in the Leon's a nae church and it's dedicated to the matres Auguste by Felgo and Really interesting character here is this pH ligature and But the really the beautiful letters this are that reminds me of woody what woodpecker for some reason Beautiful dancing letter and still has the the the red paint in it Or it was repainted, you know who knows So I feel felt like I had to throw in a couple of a pretty straightforward Romans for you in And the museum is full of that look how the wide stance on this end That's the sort of standout letter and I noticed that lots and lots of the inscriptions in the Museum had S's that leaned forward a little bit and Plus there's a wide kick on the R. We'll see that a lot so that was No, that was one piece and then this one is a four-piece inscription and here's a detail of that and The lettering I love the lettering of course, but seeing the ravages of time on things is another big part of this for me So I love the the rivers of Cracks that are going through this one So this is one of the one of the theaters that you can see from a window This picture was taken from a window in the museum The museum is built into the hillside as it starts to run down towards this and the first time I went This is my third trip to Leon The first time I went they wouldn't let me take pictures in the museum But they have this big quarry of inscriptions out here And you can jump from stone to stone and take pictures You know like this and a really a lot of fun these trailers weren't here the first time and seemed like there were more of these inscriptions But luckily they've relaxed the photography Restriction and it's boy. It's still really worth going the first time I went I wasn't even planning on going to Leon I stopped in Belgium and Christopher Bodin's I'd gone to see Jean-Claude Lamberot exhibit. He's a French stone carver and Stopped in Belgium first and Christopher said well if you're going you have to go to Leon because it's so full of You know the really the gritty kind of inscriptions lots of inspiration for the Bodin's family Lettering comes from a place like this so this great. This is the epitaph of Apia Zoe from 259 AD and Her husband had this done for and he thought her an exceptional woman full of consideration for him and the sweetest of souls is what this says and You can see that it's in two pieces and these two pieces were you know lost to history and discovered one was discovered in 1832 and the other half was discovered in 1950 so more than a hundred years later and they put them together And I can't decide whether this was the piece was found first To give it exposure to the air and lost all its pain and this is the one they found second or if you know or the other way around who knows What happens to those pieces over? 118 years But they're together again just like Apia and her husband With the gods So a close-up of the of the the still painted side and this is a wall of the The stuff that captivates Dean and David Each one of these following ones and I'm gonna go through them a little bit fast I didn't get the information, but all of them are the the exuberance of Lettering amateurs, you know what amateur means right people who do things for the love of it and Really sassy letters everywhere so this is just you know You're doing this dance where it's take a picture sidestep take a picture sidestep Look at these these ours.  And so this one the ends hit the baseline, but not the ours and then this one The ours do make it almost down to the bottom, but the ends are staying high on the right side. The dance Is beautiful even when it's awkward Yeah, exactly Okay, and so while we're talking about letters that are not as carefully made Whether on purpose or not this is a marble inlay in the floor of the Vatican from 1966 and Look at this so this had to have been done on purpose to inlay the marble like that and The thing that definitely appeals to my The psychedelic side of me is these These are the the pillars the bronze pillars of Bernini's Baldecino the canopy over the papal altar in the Vatican 1623 to 34 and cast from bronze This is another fact I got from Dean cast from the bronze that was possibly liberated from the pantheon and different kind of pillars coming up here is this arm tattoo by Lady Sarah Sarah Laverne Laverrani, she's a tattoo artist in Bologna, and she was in my calligraphy class in Rome just a couple blocks from the from the Vatican also and She sacrificed her arm to a friend of hers and told him he could do whatever he wanted and he free-handed this on her arm While we're slumming here, I guess we this is in Naples one night while we were in Naples We just got on the the subway and picked a random exit and got off and we got off into a really dangerous neighborhood And we ended up having dinner in an alleyway This really turned out great the food was fantastic and it was just this little alley with tables sitting in the alley But this was some graffiti on the way back. You know hoping we could find that subway stop again And we were walking down the middle of the street. I'm telling you we were not walking near the alleys so On this trip. We started in Padua and these are the doors to the Palazzo Zabora a 19th century house, but you can see these were also Cast in bronze and both of these gentlemen are holding scrolls filled with these tiny Roman caps and It seemed to have been done in 1915 according to the door the corners all had These icons and different icons in each corner Padua is a wonderful place. There's three fantastic museums across the street from each other and The first one we're going to go to here is called Palazzo Zuckerman which is applied in decorative arts. And so there's two floors that is the museum with the Not so much paintings as the decorative arts and the top floor is the Bada Chin museum Which is totally devoted to this collection that a man named Nicola Bada Chin donated to The city of Padua in 1865 and they had this museum so Coins were a big part of it. So the orange coins are From the classical period first century and the ones on the black background are 20th century coins and I was just there were so many coins that I was just picking ones out and then I'd photograph the descriptive panel next to it and then Went on so that I could piece it together later and when I got home I realized that I had taken a picture of a Trajan coin an actual Trajan coin from You know from the first century in this great a shape online There isn't a picture of a coin one of these coins anywhere near the quality of this coin so I when I got back from The trip to Italy I was teaching in Kalamazoo, Michigan I showed some of these pictures and I said so I finally got this I finally got this Trajan coin and somebody in the classes Wow, what did that cost? And I said, you know, can you just imagine that? All the temples that have crumbled into the sea I'm gonna show you something that they dug out of the river fantastic building. They dug out of the river in Rome And this coin made it 2,000 years 1900 years in this kind of condition. How does that even happen? Life is so strange and wonderful. So these signs were actually done in the 1880s Around the 1880s sometime for the museum itself. So they were signs Advertised in the museum or identifying the museum and now there pieces in the museum So there was a lot of this beautiful woodwork. So this is a Sign that has it is three-dimensional But it's carved to look like you can see the shade like the letters are coming out at you Even though they're about this far off the they're just whoops move to the side a little bit So that's it straight on and you can make out the the shade on that the left edge of each stroke But it's a carved illusion. You know how many of those those painted illustrations of letters like this Or signs that look like this that are painted and here they actually carved one of them And there were cases around the the top floor of the museum that had woodwork Obviously by the same person or or else it was the style of the day Really beautiful stuff Also in Naples one of the most beautiful goal leaf signs. I've seen in all of Italy and I look for such things of course. This is a tobacco shop in a shopping mall So the guy saw me taking pictures of it and he actually knew about the sign He said it was done in the 1970s late 1970s and he didn't know who it was because he had bought the The shop from somebody else But do you know this sign, you know goal leaf process that the When you do a two-tone gold sign on glass you apply gold with water size Just big chunks of gold covering the areas that you're gonna That you're gonna have the outline and then you paint on the back All this is done on the inside of the glass you paint on the back The stuff that you want to stay on the the glass so the outline is Got special paint that stands up to washing and it also dries really quickly so you paint the outline on the back of the gold and When it dries you wash the window and every place that the gold is not protected by the paint it comes off So it's black paint on the back of this gold that's holding it onto the window then then you paint a clear varnish in the middle of it and And that's just like a glue you wait for it to get tacky and you press the gold into it so you can use two two different colors of gold and The outline is a mirror so when you walk down the street and you walk by a sign that has a Burnish outline that changes, you know Depending on what it's reflecting. Whereas the middle the matte center keeps the light no matter what it does And it keeps the true shape of the letter so this also has a blended shade on it as well just One layer my sign painting buddies in the letter heads would have what they call it a Double split blended shade But this is not split but it is blended how it goes from the the darker green to the lighter green on this maroon background so cool with these You know deco-ish letters Really nice, so we'll jump back in time then this is 1326 Back to Padua again This is an inscription from the church of San Lorenzo in Padua With these Lombardic caps and eccentric Ligatures and characters that I have no idea what they are. What the heck is that? Does anybody read this I Didn't think so So here's another one from the same museum and this one is even more wacky Look how lightweight the thin lines are and how heavy these are plus the the great spurs That the swelling strokes have the Rs the m's the ends. Oh And this one is 1422 a funerary inscription for a guy named Jacopo del Santo and this is from the church of San Francesco Also from Padua is the a floor mosaic from mid 4th century and it's a prayer for the room and I've only got two things from Venice. This is from a couple years ago Venice is a different animal than the rest of Europe. It seems that It doesn't go back as far so it it the graphics around there have a real different feel I Can't even tell if this says CA or LA Tintoretto Does it make more sense to say la? Ca what does that mean? Ah? Okay While I was in Venice though the last time I was in Venice I got taken to a gold leaf shop place where they're making gold leaf and it was Titians old studio and then it's now a gold leaf making shop I bought some fast fantastic hand-beaten gold that was done right in his studio and Then this gorgeous Carve sign on a church Also appeals to my psychedelic side if Grendel was telling the truth So this is a long story here. This is the thing that they found in the river This is buried under 12 feet of silt in the river and this is the oh You know what I didn't bring Try and remember this. This is the the era Pockeys which is the temple to Pox the the goddess of peace and it was done in oh man. I had all the facts. I Knew I forgot something What's that? Augustus yes, it was to celebrate him coming back from Hispania and golly was gone for three years and There isn't much lettering, but the how the carving is just exquisite and This was built on the river plane and over the centuries It was completely covered and they discovered they discovered this in got it. This was another one where they found pieces in The 1500s then they found them again in the 1800s and they There were reasons that they couldn't excavate it for because of existing buildings and they decided to finally go for it in 1903 and reconstructed it a Lot of planning up to that time Reconstructed it for a museum across the street from Augustus's mausoleum by the Mussolini government and Well, what was the architects name Montepurgo or something like that? I wish I had those notes anyway They started to build a museum to house this as a Tribute to Augustus and the the next thing that they did was when Augustus died he had written a big long his last will and testament and the rescue style his Deeds, how do you say Dean? Yeah, the matter of things it was just he described all his his professional life and is very long Treatise and they were Cast into plates in bronze plates that they put on the doors of his mausoleum and then they sent it out to the provinces To do the same thing That they were gonna dedicate these buildings and with his words all over the Roman Empire the Roman plates disappeared And so the only reason the only way we know that complete text of his You know his famous words were these three different temples in modern-day Turkey so this is from Ankara and And they were able to piece together the full thing they had three different versions of it or three different sections of it in these carved on the walls in Turkey and This is also part of the 1938 Restoration that they cast the letters in bronze and then did a rough carving into the stone into the marble and Inserted the letters in there So all these letters were carved in the stone and then the cast letters were put inside. So here's pictures of them doing this in 1938 Designed also by this this architect whose name I could tell you if I brought that piece of paper with me So really kind of rough I you know I I thought wow could there be this many stone carvers in Rome in 1938 but the the carving didn't have to be that exact because the bronze letters were gonna take care of most of that so the thing about it is that there were 15,000 115 letters so this is this is my friend Robin modeling scale for us and It goes on 15,000 letters hand carved in 1938 and then the war came along so this museum did not get completed and all this left from the 1938 version of the museum is this wall. That's that's it and this is directly across the street I mean if she turned around she'd be looking at Augustus's mausoleum, which is now under construction but So this is via Rapetta. So if she turned to her right and looked down the street. She'd see the the popolo What's the word I want the column Yeah Blocks and blocks down the way on the way up to the gardens So also in Rome This this church that I found this in is famous for being the home to the Caravaggio paintings of st. Matthew Which was one of his first major Commissions and we you know we were told to go there for the Caravaggio paintings and then I got caught by this fantastic carving All these letters are raised, you know So let's say they're three-eighths of an inch off the marble. So that means that this guy had to carve Down to the letters past the letters smooth out the letters I mean the the background and leave those things raised without the chisel catching those letters and knocking something off and look how many You know there's this is I've never carved marble, but this looks like a big task to me a big careful task It was done by a man named Des Vergne's would you say this in Italian des ver G NES? Can you see that? Oh, good looks better up on the screen than here And I think that's a ch in the front. So he could have been Charles or it could just be some CB it could be some Italian thing I don't understand but this is from 1900 Also in the same church was something that was a little bit simpler But still the same thing the letters were raised about a half of an inch So they had to carve down to that layer and then go past that layer and smooth it all out Really pretty amazing and you can see from this shot here that this vein of the marble.  You can't miss the Me music museo naginale Romano and full of inscriptions this is this cute little urn was Let's see. Where are we? Earned for the ashes of cilia a pyre she was a Golden robe merchant and then her husband is the the name on the bottom of the urn in a completely different style So we kind of have a Herculaneum You know I don't want to say inspired by Herculaneum. Let's say a Herculaneum was inspired by this Frutiguer's typeface and then more classic Caps on the bottom. So this was first century AD use it was all they would say about the date on this and Here's a slab placed by Alpia Priscilla for her husband a fetus who is an Imperial freedman whose duty was to compile the guest list for the emperor and his title was invitator But you know so just the other day You know when they were mentioning Pat Blair in the the White House Collegiate first So I was imagining maybe he's writing the the the invites, you know doing the invitations and sending them out So this her husband was a freedman who Became the calligrapher for the emperor and it has a patera which just means bowl with a downflow of holes I don't know why they would need this but for this funerary slab and This is the lid for a slaves slave That the slave was so important to whoever his master was that they gave him his own slave And he liked him enough to make this urn. This is the top of the urn. It also has a hole in it. So You know perhaps you use it like a salt shaker I don't know but the letters are great. The letters are really great Okay, this is my favorite thing in the I really I think this is my favorite thing that I saw in the At least for this part of the slideshow This is a brick stamp From 146 AD and again Dean helped me a lot with the Translation of this and it's from the farm estate manner of something called for waters That could be the name of this farm and then the family name which is Annias the inner circle has a woman's name Faustina and the potter's name Sexty apri Silvini Every word and name in this is abbreviated every single one And the picture is a bust of mercury in his traveling cap Called a pet pet a sati with a caduceus behind him and his purse in front of him So all this help I need to say Gradius TB to Dean and David for helping we figure this out But the thing I love about this there were lots of these things that had this letter style Which is the ancestor of the Latin typeface, you know with wedge serifs and I asked even to get out one of the Type specimens from the letter form archive today and it's in the case in the back So you can see the modern-day version of it's always been one of my favorite kind of typefaces The Latin family of type and it definitely came right from this So here's this is one that you can see that this is stamped in clay So these these guys this the Annias family was probably Clay brick makers and they would stamp their work Although when I see this one it really feels like this is carved out of stone But if it was the stamp to press into the To make the impression in the brick it would have to have been backwards So it it must have been and this one is painted this one is not And here's one more with that letter style in a square one and these are all little things like about this all first century Rome no, this is second century. I'm sorry 146 One of my favorite things about Roman lettering that I noticed since I went is I love Strokes that don't have vertical serifs. So the ease the F's the T's they're all open going this way vertical Strokes have flat horizontal serifs, but there's no vertical serifs and it's something that I just love about This you know from this time period of lettering There's a tour of the scavi beneath the Vatican that you can go You know the main attraction there is that they take you by the mausoleum that they think held st. Peter's bones But it's in a cemetery and so it's full of these inscriptions and some of the most gorgeous letters in all of Rome And there's lots of this and they don't let you take pictures. So Next time I'm I'm gonna ask somebody if I can take some pictures But this one can you see the the scratch guidelines? So whether or not it was painted or carved they would scratch guidelines in it, you know, it's like Somebody should have invented a pencil for these people So this one is from a Decree of the Jewish community in Austria early first century And again the really wide ours. We see a lot of that There's a hint of vertical serifs over here on this E So it it wasn't every place but it was common to see those things being open This is a long poem from second century AD dedicated by a patron and perhaps lover of a freed woman Alia Podesta so her name is across the top Here it says potesta, but the translation They change it to a D for some reason the opening Dismannib or is is short for Dismannibus sacrum, which is to the mains or the departed spirits or ghosts or shades So frequently, you know a back on this last one here. This DM stands for this Dismannibus sacrum here. It's they've shortened it to Dismannib and Details here her name is done in you know, these flying horizontal strokes, which I'm just so in love with and Then the text itself is Slightly rustic slightly square caps All exuberance and this gorgeous thing, you know, this is my favorite piece that I saw in this trip Not that other crummy thing before This is this is a marble piece from Naples and it's three minutes municipal decrees honoring Tetyacasta, who is a priestess for a feminine cult? Possibly Demeter's the goddess of harvest and agriculture and you can see that it's done in Greek and It's been damaged over the years Where the The letters exposed the the stone and you can just imagine the structure of the stone being in like horizontal flakes So if it got any damage these things would pop off with just slim horizontal things and give us these fantastic new letters And look at these two a's they they got distressed in the same way The middle of this N is gone and this E is sort of sliding away and these two T's bookending each other It's you know, again the ravages of time. It's a wonderful thing What it's doing to letters that were beautiful in the first place and turning them into something that was not created by the hand of man It's a it's a lovely thing So this is also from Naples and it's not from Pompeii. This is from Puglioli, which is a modern-day Poseyoli and Puglioli comes from the Latin name Puglio to stink And it's built on a volcanic Caldera, so there's the sulfur smell is all over the place St. Paul landed there and lasted a week and said well, let's go to Rome, you know, because and this is a dedication to the emperor Domitian so it was done in 93 or 94 AD just 20 years before the Trajan column and It was put up in by the regio of the vikas Vistorianus and Calpurnianus, so, you know, it's no surprise that it stank but But the thing to notice here is that the the lettering changes it comes from the top at the top we've got classic Roman lettering very much like Trajan caps and down at the bottom look how stylized it got where the Bowl of the R turned into this perfect circle, so it reminds me of two things that one of my favorite things about Trajan style lettering is that center stroke coming out straight and not becoming part of the circle So here's three pieces by Cadditch where he points out He calls this the juncture one of the junctures the place where that Horizontal stroke hits the curve stroke and these two pieces from also from Cadditch Emphasize that even stronger that this is a straight horizontal stroke coming out from there So if and this is that top corner of the Domitian piece I'm sorry and down below. I want to show you this is Trajan This is Stevens titling and this is origami by Carl Crossgrove John Stevens Stevens titling so you can see that with Trajan they stylized it and they did round out that place or we're used to seeing it being round in an hour John caught the You know Cadditch's juncture and Carl Crossgrove one of the main design features of this beautiful face origami is that the Counterspaces in the round letters are rectangles and that's really kind of what is causing the juncture here But it really does echo the shape of these things so boy Do I love origami if he would just make small caps? I Would use it much more and Then here now we're going down to the lower part of that inscription where the stylizing and as soon as I saw this I thought about this this little wooden letter that I had gotten from a friend. It was broken I you know I fixed this in Photoshop, and then I thought oh you guys could should see what it really looks like Since we're talking about the ravages of time, but the roundness of the bottom of this bowl So, you know, it's not like I'm exclusively a flat mid stroke guy. It's a I like letters You know wherever It moves you so both these ours and let's go back for just a second I want to show you the full piece that very classic Roman caps at the top and then we get down to the The more stylized ones at the bottom Isn't that cool you got admit Okay, so let's go back in time This is we're going back to 1973 here. I my teacher at Humboldt State was reasonable and as Grendel mentioned that part was true and in 2005 I took calligraphy in 1973 at Humboldt State And in 2005 I was going to do a slideshow about The ghosts of calligraphy and I thought well I can make it personal it doesn't have to be famous people so I went and saw his son who is a printer in Berkeley David Bullen and To do some research to see what he had on his father And we're going through a box of stuff and I pull out this photograph This is 2005 30 years after my first calligraphy class and it was like my second calligraphy lesson I saw a picture of this thing. It's so beautiful that I remember the first day Roman caps We did straight stroke letters ease H's a's and V's second one was composite characters So this is my second calligraphy lesson It probably wasn't taking the day of my class, but it was that era. This is my classroom Really exciting thing and of course I heard about the Trajan column on the first day of My first calligraphy class And of course, you know the the famous caddage theory is that the letters were painted on stone Then the the carvers came along and the shape of our letters came from the brush not the chisel Etc. Etc. Here is You know another famous part of the origin of the serif of course is that Father Caddage was a sign painter in Chicago Before he entered the priesthood and started studying paleontology and So there's a chapter in origin of the serif about this but recently I took a picture of this watercolor study that Caddage did Paul Herrera had this and where he's talking about he's always said that a Roman Letter painter in a toga could get a job in a Chicago sign shop in the 1920s So he's making that comparison right here and saying that a Chicago sign painter could go back in time and get right on the crew that was Working on the on the column in any place else. I'm lingering here a little bit to give you a chance to read this Really pretty funny and then caddage loved to do what he called can't gyrations with a with the brush Meaning angle changes So these exercises here I just never seen them in watercolors like this this other one there was another piece With these watercolors where he had changed the color for each of the different strokes of the letter and notice this You know that he's not polishing these letters. He's making the stroke be the simple stroke and Oh before we get to that I was gonna show you his carving that he was faithful to those letters in his carvings Sometimes this is old Rick Menhart in his book now called Pismo where he's showing us caddage theory in two and a half inches and Not only is the brush Influencing the shape of the letter the silhouette of the letter. He's appearing to suggest that it's also Influencing the shape of the terminal in the carving as well so this is a Caddage slate in Rick Q6 living room It's on one wall and on this wall There's a caddage rubbing of the trajan of the inscription on the trajan column in his living room the light was so bad I couldn't get a good shot of it And I decided not to show you the bad shots But I did want to want you to see this letter Look at the gorgeous carving that we have here that he's really showing the flow of the brush with the With the point the deep point of the carving Coming in Really gorgeous this really bad low light So this is not the greatest one, but you can you can see the carving here and then We have some of his litho stone carvings from Reed College here as well so this is all carved and everything is painted except the ampersand is gilded and one of the things one of the points that he makes in origin of the serif and that we talked about a little bit in the article in the last alphabet is that caddage believed that Insized carvings should be very shallow and these stones at Reed you can see are just breathtakingly shallow I've carved wooden signs would you know incise carved letters in wood as well as I took a class from Paul Herrera and did slate once and Shallow is actually a little harder than deeper to keep it even to get through this and these stones at Reed are Fantastic and Andrea I I searched all over for my pictures of the stones that are upstairs in the Harrison Couldn't find those pictures So I'm not showing those things, but that gives you an excuse to go upstairs and see the two caddage stones that Are here in the library of the Harrison collection Here's an upside down shot of the painted letter and We'll come back to that but in all of these cases you can see just how shallow his carving is pretty amazing and as a Contrast here. I want to show you somebody who does carve deeply and this is Jean-Claude Lambeau the first time I Came to Lyon was I was really coming to see Lambeau's show had a tiny little show in Vovique which is at the same latitude as Lyon And I was coming to see that before Kristoffel said well, it's great You're coming to see Jean-Claude who was one of his teachers by the way But you've got to go to Lyon to see the carvings there So look how deep these are and if you're not familiar with Lambeau's stuff Well, I got another slideshow about him if you want to see that and He did really fantastic Combo characters and ligatures very inventive the letter forms were not that unusual He would take these classic forms and make them his own So his layout and his carving was so exciting. I'm sorry This is the only piece of his I'm going to show you but it's just for contrast This is a caddage slate in David Bullen's living room that obviously came from his father and here it's a handwriting called Petrarch which is Caddage's humanistic book hand Carved in slate and you'll notice with all the caddage of stuff. It's either gilded or painted and Here's those serifs again that we talked about Earlier in these the gilded caps so look at the carving here these these great little rectangles that create X's in the incision and this sideways movement and the last caddage thing I'll show you for now is another stone from From Reed the in the library at Reed And I thought this was just Something that he was working on on paper it looked like yellowed Bristol board or something like that And then I noticed up in the top that he started to carve this So this is a lithos stone and it says Reed written handwriting again named Petrarch and So I think he was saying that he wrote this on the stone with tush, I guess Using a pen and not a brush and started to carve and some something got in the way Just decided not to carve this so you have this great beginning of the carving and seeing his handwriting So here's a picture of my teacher on the left Reese Bullen and Father Caddage. This is 1973 in Eureka like two months after I picked up a calligraphy pen Lenore Katie and Reese Bullen brought Father Caddage to Eureka for workshops, so I so I signed up for a rewriting workshop with Father Caddage. Is that a big surprise to you, Kendall?  It was just a morning class It was set up that you could there were four workshops over two days and you could take all four Which would lead you to painting on stone and carving a little bit, but I could only afford it You know as a college student So I just took the morning class and left but the last thing he did was he painted on slate Gray slate with pink paint and a flat brush, and I had never seen anything so beautiful happen so fast This you know beautiful pink letters on slate and then he washed them right off I was like what are you doing? He goes well, you know, we'll do it again in the afternoon class You know you wanted to save the slate for that, but it did make an impression even though I wasn't ready Anyway, I'd all this is leading up to the fact that I've been hearing about the Trajan column all my calligraphy life and finally in 2001 I got a chance to go to To Rome couldn't wait to see it got there covered in scaffolding and also the rude awakening of finding out that they do not Let you down into the forum. I'd never I had no idea. I thought I was gonna be strolling up and You know getting a good look at these letters So we went back in 2004 the scaffolding was still up went back in 2012 It was down, but of course you can't get down inside and then on this last trip last summer Fate all kinds of luck happened. This is what it looks like on an August afternoon these days and We did get down inside the forum To see these things and get get some pictures. So here's Finally in all its glory the Trajan inscription. We'll just go closer and closer That you know if you've seen older pictures of it There were stains all down the right side and the scaffolding was up for the restoration of the column and especially the base and There has been acid rain Rain damage a lot of the carvings on the column itself and on the building are Shadows of what they used to be the lettering feels soft I have to say the lettering does feel soft But it was so beautiful to see it and the marble up close was a huge revelation. It was a Fantastic thing to get up. There was really one of the best days of my life Not to be too nerdy about stuff, but These the letters of course Cadditch says that they were there they were carved everything was carved for permanence, but It was also a vehicle to be painted. So this was the It's theorized and it's probable that the entire thing was painted. So Because of the volcano in Pompeii we can see some of these letters that still retain their pain inside almost always when you see pictures or you see anything painted the letters are painted red on the The white surface sometimes it's painted white We're gonna see we'll get to that painting part in a second. So this is the base and then it was explained to us that the The inscription is on what's called the sixth block with the sixth zone So you can see here that the construction is that at the base they run sideways The next one and two run this way three and four run this way five and six run this way seven and eight run this way so the sixth block is the full width of the column in the front and the five is in the back and This is I Just took this right out of National Geographic the April 2015 has a big story on the column and the history of the the wars itself They even go to Romania You know Trajan wiped out the civilization of the Dacians wiped it out and Took all the riches there were gold mines and you know this fabulous new wealth built Trajan's forum and the column and the column is celebrating the two wars that they had in 102 101 and 102 and then 105 and 106 then they came home with all this loot and built a column so So modern-day Romanians Find the column a real valuable thing so they can see what their ancestors look like or how they dressed anyway Because they're shown being slaughtered on the barber pole of the the column going up So the the inscription is not mentioned barely mentioned But you can see here that it's red letters on the white background and all the rest of it is painted this this of course is them You know colorizing their photographs for this and designing this there's a big five stretch pull-out poster of the Trajan column in it So if you can track that down, it's kind of cool to have The last thing here notice. There's no shadows on the on the inscription Our hostess Picked the time of day that we the light was the best for us to show up The inscription is tilted out about a half inch so that it makes it a little bit easier to see from this from the ground and Of course, it's famous that the top letters are taller than the bottom letters to make it feel like they're all the same size That's one theory the other one is that they The The top rows are more important information than the bottom rows So here's just a sense of scale. I also have another picture where When I took of some of the friends that were with us That made it feel much smaller so it really has to do with the angle of the camera, but I was in awe at that point and If you turn from where I was standing if you turn around and look To your right you're facing out. This is the Vittorio Emmanuel the wedding cake you know that at the bottom of via del corso and I wanted to get a picture of it from the Trajan column rather than a picture of the Trajan column from Vittorio Emmanuel, which is the way I always had to do it before And it's much it's more pretty this way, you know with these trees in the way so Down here in the corner. This is one of my You know participants in the the workshops that I taught in In Italy and she also set up the Rome workshop. This is Chiara Riva. So we're gonna finish up with some Lettering by these modern artists and so here's Chiara's work She's really young and she's only been doing calligraphy since 2012 and she really has A soul that sees beauty We spend a lot of time together with a pointed brush This is from last summer's. This is something she did in class it up in a bono in the north of Italy Where would they have a retreat the calligraphy of association the Italian calligraphy Association has a retreat in this monastery every year with different teachers So I taught there in 2015 and again this last time and Chiara was in the class and we were looking at Roger ex-cafans mistral as a influence for brush lettering here and She loved that Did terrific with that? Here's a recent one with a with these beautiful little caps as well as a You know more Italic caps for the background, but I love the The black caps here and this is a detail the one on the right is a detail of the next piece her last piece that we're going to see here so She seems to have been a calligrapher in a previous life and Next is Giovanna Di Faccio We hung out together in he teaches at a bono every year He's one of the founders of the Italian calligraphy Association and he teaches there every year the other teachers they bring in different folks every year, but he is there every year and He's he's a stone carver carver and a Type designer as well as one of Italy's preeminent calligraphers even though he now lives in Austria I think his wife is Austrian and he teaches calligraphy and type design at the new diet new Design University in St. Paulton, Austria And it's probably not an exaggeration to say that he's been That every Italian calligrapher in Italy today has been his student one way or another and Here's his rustic. This is from a instructional book that the Association put out Four or five years ago, and he did several of the plates along with other members of the of the group I love how clean this is and here's his unshell But he does modern work too And Here's some of his stonework besides the Mozart but those other three pieces are carved and this project He calls it the Littori project It's a manuscript on parchment using a quill pen only and mineral and vegetable pigments prepared at home according to ancient recipes so he's trying to be you know as Faithful to the old-time scribe as possible and it was a five-year project And I've got just six plates from the book each one is different even though the layout is very similar Each style is really different. I love this this wild one on the left Contrasted to the Italian handwriting on the right and here's his tight-faced Rialto I'm you know I'm a sucker for half-bracketed letters and these are really loudly half-bracketed you know, there's a bracket on the the left on the bottom and On the right at the top so it's it's kind of a reverse Caddage flow Caddage comes in from the from the left ends on the right But he's starting on the the right and ending on the left with his half-bracket here and one last look at Giovanni Giovanni's most famous student and this should remind you of him a little bit is Luca Barcellona and Luca has published so much. He's got the the beautiful book. He's all over the the web. He's this is a busy guy He really has become successful. Did you know he was a rapper first? He's part of a trio of rappers and he came to calligraphy through graffiti But Giovanni changed his life by introducing him to calligraphy. So now he does experimental, you know He has the influence from both fields And I thought I would show you something that you might not get to see when I visited him in Milan in 2012 He let me go through his flat files. So I just took pictures of things. He was goofing off on butcher paper with So each one of these is just cheap butcher paper with white and black paint all with a brush and You can see that very influenced by Giovanni and the Kant gyrations that Caddage talked about There's his brush is moving all over the place with this stuff and There's also a little linoleum cut book of his work I think that's oh and then you can also get Luca Barcellona wallpaper This is really there's a Website it's mentioned in the in the journal That you can order this piece of wallpaper and put it up on your there's a I think he's got three designs for them that you could order and then Finally our last artist. This is Elena Pelle Coro. She's from Turin and she is a character. She's classically trained as a Tromploi artist All kinds of practical painting stuff. So this carving is a painting So all of this is illustration. She there's lots of these ceilings where she paints decorative, you know, does decorative work on these ceilings This is a painted bookcase and Decorated furniture Along with a decorative cap, you know a painted This is a convex letter. It's coming out towards us not going in You can always tell if you're if you're ever trying to figure that out if the shadow is on the underside It's coming out at you if it's of the shadows on the top side of the strokes. It's supposed to be a con cut-in letter concave Cut and embossed she loves to emboss So she loves wacky modern stuff as well as classical. This is all cut paper Accordion fold book just gray and red and white paper this one has Primary colors only but a similar feeling to those kind of letters Scroll work painted scroll work another three-dimensional decorative letter of that age and This one when the first time I saw this This piece it was hanging in front of a bookcase So I thought she had cut it out of paper, but it turns out that it's just painted on acetate But so when I asked her about that she goes, oh that gives me an idea So I think we're gonna see this one cut out soon So traditional calligraphy over here, you know, she's come to calligraphy a little bit late a little bit later She's been doing all these decorative arts for so long in painting letters. The calligraphy is kind of new This is embossed and gilded But she's dynamite with a pen also. So this is pen work From our class in a bono this last summer and this is embossed work Here's a a cut accordion alphabet Cut on the left embossed on the right a cut fish in the middle So remember with embossing she's cutting all these things out of heavy board And then pressing the paper down into it. So all of it's cutting But papers a lot easier to cut than the board for embossing Intricate cutting here cutting and folding to get these letters to pop out at you So endlessly inventive endlessly looking for for stuff. This is a painted map and the most beautiful letter that I saw on this trip of this section of the slideshow is This s So painted scroll like circus scroll Lettering I flipped over this one so loud that it's now hanging in my house It's only about this big So I suppose This is this is from Giotto's Scriveny Chapel, which is right across the street from Palazzo Zuckerman in in Padua Padua or Padua I should say and so I hope we haven't got steam coming out of your eyeballs But I did want to leave you with one last thing. This is this is the way we closed Dean's Article in the journal and this is a funerary slab of maxima dated 525 ad With a cross at the beginning and a Christian palm at the end. This is Dean's words There is much to admire the cues that look like backward nines in Requisite and okay, where's requisite on the top. Yeah That's a that's a cue The small vowels the careful bars individual abbreviations the way lists was fit in Where's list fitting in there Dean? Second to the bottom. Yeah, right there and the overall liveliness The translation here rest in peace made servant of Christ maxima who lived 25 years or so She lived with her husband for seven years and six months. She was friendly faithful good to everyone and prudent So It's closing thoughts tonight. We said may we all be friendly faithful good to everyone and lively overall The prudence is up to you