Malis­sa Lara

The in­ti­ma­cy of a hand­writ­ten let­ter with a turkey quill and tak­ing the time to cre­ate beau­ti­ful hand­writ­ing is rare.

Yet, this cen­turies-old tra­di­tion is kept alive by Paul An­to­nio At­tong. In this age of high tech­nol­o­gy where a large por­tion of the world no longer writes but types, Trinidad-born At­tong has made an in­ter­na­tion­al name for him­self and his craft. At­tong told the Sun­day Guardian,"There are very few things that are more spe­cial than see­ing your own name writ­ten beau­ti­ful­ly." His love for cal­lig­ra­phy(beau­ti­ful hand­writ­ing) has won him a large clien­tele.

Among them are some of the many well-known, such as Tiffany & Co, Ralph Lau­ren and Louis Vuit­ton. The mod­ern-day scribe who lives in Lon­don, told an in­ter­na­tion­al news­pa­per that on a suit­able sur­face, "a squared quill is still the most ex­cep­tion­al writ­ing tool we have ever pro­duced." In fact, he cuts the quills him­self and can even pre­pare calf­skin vel­lum on which he can write. At­tong has al­so just start­ed a sta­tionery com­pa­ny. Each en­ve­lope is ad­dressed by hand, as the in­for­ma­tion for each will be dif­fer­ent. The Sun­day Guardian was able to in­ter­view the scribe.

Q: Where in T&T did you grow up?

A: I grew up in San Fer­nan­do.

What school did you at­tend?

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege. It was here that I had my in­ter­est in cal­lig­ra­phy kin­dled by Mrs Gon­salves. When­ev­er I vis­it Trinidad I drop by the Col­lege to see my teach­ers and al­ways end up giv­ing a class on cal­lig­ra­phy for the present art class.

Do you have a large clien­tele?

I have a huge client list–some of my fash­ion clients in­clude As­prey, De Beers, Chopard, Louis Vuit­ton. We do a ton of wed­dings and have just stared a sta­tionery com­pa­ny. Our tag line for the sta­tionery is 'We On­ly Print What We Write' so we don't use any type­faces in our work–all of it is done by hand first then digi­tised then print­ed in one of a few high-qual­i­ty print process­es. Some of our cor­po­rate clients in­clude RBS, Lon­don Busi­ness School (for in­vi­ta­tions and cer­tifi­cates). Nu­mer­ous par­ty plan­ners in­clude the Ad­mirable Crich­ton, Atom Events, Freud Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

See­ing that you are one of a few, how do peo­ple re­spond to you?

It is hell at a din­ner par­ty! I dread when some­one asks "So what do you do?" be­cause then all con­ver­sa­tion at the din­ner ta­ble stops. There is a spec­tac­u­lar show­case of skilled crafts­men in Ju­ly every year called Art In Ac­tion. And they get to­geth­er over 200 crafts­men to show the pub­lic how things are done–cal­lig­ra­phy is a mag­net. Be­cause we can all write, be­ing able to make some­thing we can all do, and do it beau­ti­ful­ly is like watch­ing mag­ic tricks.

Would you ad­vise oth­ers to make a ca­reer of cal­lig­ra­phy?

It is very dif­fi­cult to be­come a pro­fes­sion­al cal­lig­ra­ph­er. It re­quires years of ded­i­ca­tion, and not mak­ing any mon­ey while you come to terms with your skill. It is al­so not easy to train as there are so few cours­es run­ning. Get­ting a good hand is one thing but it is get­ting it con­sis­tent all the time that is the trick. You not on­ly need to know what you do in­side out–as you will get asked to write on all kinds of things, but you need to be able to deal with peo­ple and con­vince them that you are what they need! In­vari­ably it is ei­ther you are good at art or good at busi­ness but you have to be good at both if you want to make a de­cent liv­ing. It is not some­thing that hap­pens eas­i­ly. It takes time, pa­tience, ded­i­ca­tion, ap­pli­ca­tion and re­search.

Is it lu­cra­tive?

It is on­ly in the past three years I have been earn­ing a de­cent liv­ing. But what is lu­cra­tive? It is not on­ly about mak­ing mon­ey–it is al­so about the stand­ing amongst your peers on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage. It is about con­tribut­ing to the cor­pus of knowl­edge in one's field of ex­per­tise. But then there is per­son­al wealth. Mak­ing mon­ey comes with much stress and some­times you need to make a de­ci­sion if you ac­tu­al­ly want the added stress. That is a tricky ques­tion to an­swer. A lot of the time mak­ing mon­ey and earn­ing a liv­ing is to the ex­clu­sion of re­search–but one is fi­nan­cial­ly lu­cra­tive and one is per­son­al­ly lu­cra­tive.

Do you plan to re­turn to T&T?

For va­ca­tion? Yes, if vis­it­ing fam­i­ly can be called a va­ca­tion! But se­ri­ous­ly, I have no plans to re­turn for the fore­see­able fu­ture but noth­ing is set in stone. I love my fam­i­ly and miss them very much but I al­so love my call­ing and it is here the re­search ma­te­ri­als re­side. It's a tough call.

Would you call your­self an artist?

I think ar­ti­san would be a more apt de­scrip­tion of what I do. Apart from the cal­lig­ra­phy there is a his­tor­i­cal side to the work where we ac­tu­al­ly use the tools and ma­te­ri­als that the monks used. I grind my own green out of mala­chite. I use a 14th cen­tu­ry recipe to make ink and to lay gold leaf. And we get vel­lum in (made for calf­skin) made us­ing the same method that was used in the fourth cen­tu­ry. Apart from the writ­ing and the paint­ing there is an al­chem­i­cal as­pect to the work that is more craft than art.

Do you have an­oth­er pro­fes­sion or is cal­lig­ra­phy your on­ly one?

I sus­pect if we get an ex­tra day it would still not be enough time to do all that is go­ing on in the stu­dio! An­oth­er pro­fes­sion?