Love Letters (2008)

Love Letters: An Anthropomorphic Alphabet (2008)
Rowland Scherman
Casebound, doublures, perfect bound. H178 x W180 mm. 34 pages. Acquired from Rowland Scherman, 3 March 2023.
Photos of the book: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Rowland Scherman.

Braccelli. “Alfabeto figurato“. Etching. Naples, 1632.

Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s “Alfabeto Figurato”, a single-sheet etching, occurred well after Carravagio’s presence there earlier in the century but well within the sphere of his ongoing influence. The print’s contortions of human bodies to display that most human of inventions — the alphabet — would probably have pulled a sneer of admiration from him. Maybe Bracelli had heard of the 5th-century comic playwright Kallias, who had his chorus dance (no doubt “cheek to cheek”) the shapes of the Ionian contenders for letterforms. In 1969, Anthon Beeke and Ed van der Elsken had their naked models arrange themselves into the alphabet on the studio floor and took photos from above. When Rowland Scherman saw Bracelli’s print on a London bus 340 years later, he wondered if human bodies could actually hold those poses or ones like them.

In the third decade of the 21st century, when book bannings and body shaming have reached new heights (or depths), Scherman’s “Story of Love Letters” might leave the reader wondering if we are now running headlong past Kallias and the 5th century into the pre-alphabetic world.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.

“Alphabets Alive! – Body“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books.

“Anthon Beeke“. 21 June 2021. Books On Books Collection.

Bruinsma, Max. “The erotics of type“. Maxb. Accessed 15 February 2023.

Dukes, Hunter. 27 April 2023. “Punctuation Personified (1824)“. The Public Domain Review. Not only could letters be formed with the human body, so could quotation marks and square brackets.

Reed, Sue Walsh. 2000. “Bizzarie di Varie Figure: Commentary“. Octavo. Accessed from Monoskop, 28 February 2023.

Wise, Jennifer. 1998. Dionysus Writes : The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece. Ithaca ; London: Cornell UP.

Steiner Deborah. 2021. Choral Constructions in Greek Culture : The Idea of the Chorus in the Poetry Art and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See chapter 8 for the story on Kallias and dancing the alphabet.

Typographica. 18 March 2007. “Rowland Scherman’s ‘Love Letters‘”. Typographica. Accessed 13 February 2023.

Typographica. 1 April 2010 (last modified). “Bracelli.jpg“. Typographica. Accessed 13 February 2023.