Nibs, nibs and more nibs

Once you get into doing calligraphy with penholders and nibs, you'll find lots of variation in nibs sizes and styles to experiment and work with.

You will probably at some point want to get yourself enough penholders to have one for each of the nibs you use regularly. While you can change them around, it can get to be a nuisance, especially if you're using several different nibs on a project.

First, let's take a look at the different kinds of nibs available.

The most common one is the chisel or flat-edged nib. It comes with either a square cut or oblique cut edge. Left-handed calligraphers usually use the oblique cut nibs.

Then there are the nibs with square, round and oval tips.

There are also copperplate nibs - which have fine points that can open when pressure is applied to them. These are used for copperplate and Spencerian calligraphy, also for some flourishing.

You can get nibs especially designed for drawing, art and mapping.

Another nib is the steel brush. These have much wider nibs and are often used for doing poster lettering.

Coit nibs are made of folded brass with a corrugated reservoir. These are also wider and frequently used for larger lettering.

You can get scroll nibs which are like two nibs in one. Or shadow scroll nibs with two nibs - where one nib is wider than the other. Similar to the scroll nibs are the music line nibs that can create the five lines needed for writing music.

There are other nibs as well, but these are frequently combined with a holder to form a pen of its own. So check under pens for ruling pens, automatic pens, and others.

What brands of nibs are available?

One of the most common is Speedball. They carry an extensive selection of nibs and other calligraphy supplies. Check out their Speedball Product Catalogue. The calligraphy section is on pages 56-67.

Speedball also has a great Lettering Chart that gives pointers on their nibs and other calligraphy supplies, and how to use them. They also show alphabets written with the different nib styles.

Another well-known brand is Brause. They've been creating nibs for over 150 years and professional artists claim their nibs are among the best around.

Mitchell is another fairly common brand.

There are also Coit nibs, Hiro, Tachikawa, Leonardt, Gillott and others.

I'll be adding more details later, but this should give you a good start.