THE GEOMETRY OF ROMAN LETTERING The （罗马字母的几何）.pdf

      T H E G E O M E T RY O F RO M A N L E T T E R I N G T O M PE R K I N S Is there any justification for applying measurement to visual proportion? If so, when and in what way should it be applied? Not very long has this subject been con - troversial. In all advanced civilizations artists and other craftsmen seem to have felt little hesitation about using all the faculties of their minds – perception, intuition, thinking, calculation – wherever they served the purpose. Rudolph Arnheim: From ‘A Review of Proportion’. his article gives me the opportunity to extend to analyse Catich’s line drawings, not expecting anything Tsome research into a possible proportioning sys- of significance to emerge, but soon found to my surprise tem for classical Roman capitals, dating from the some interesting correspondences between the rectan- end of the first century to the beginning of the second cen- gles and the letters which encouraged me to carry on with tury AD. The original impetus for this research was pro- these investigations. vided by a weekend course on Sacred Geometry with the One rectangle in particular seemed to occur again and geometer and architect Keith Critchlow in the early 1990s. again when finding key points on the letters – this rectan- On returning from the course I was naturally keen to gle is defined by Hambidge as the ‘root five’. Hambidge find out more about the subject and if possible find some describes the root five rectangle as ‘the most distinctive application for it in my own field of lettering. I discovered shape we derive from the architectur