Writing: Making your Mark
Fascinating exhibition at the British Library looking at the development of writing.
I’d never really
thought about the evolution of writing and this show told the story in a clear
and engaging way. I found it very moving how often early pieces of writing
concern mundane personal things like a person’s wages or how much someone sold
goods for. In particular I loved a small piece of broken pot from 110AD which
was a woman called Thinabella’s licence to be a sex worker for a day. The only
record we have of that person.
I was fascinated
to see how letters developed and the display that took the capital letter A
from a hieroglyph of a antelope’s head turning round to form the letter we know
today. Also to see how Renaissance humanists changed writing from the Gothic
script to a text which became the basis of modern printed text.
There were
sections on the different materials and techniques from sticks to keyboards and
on how we learn to write and what writing means to people. I loved a display of
iconic bits of writing from James Joyce’s notes for Ulysses which actually looked like a stream of
consciousness, Mozart’s notebook of the opening bars of all his work over a
period of seven years and most movingly Scott’s last diary entry in the
Antarctic which always makes me wet eyed.
The last section
looked at the future of writing as different technologies can replace the act
of putting pen to paper what will we choose to continue to write down?
Closes on 27
August 2019
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