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People & Places >
The Wales Team > Donald Jackson
Donald Jackson
 Calligrapher
Artistic Director
Donald Jackson was
born in Lancashire, England in 1938 and is considered one of the world's
foremost Western calligraphers. At the age of 13, he won a scholarship
to art school where he spent six years studying drawing, painting, design
and the traditional Western calligraphy and illuminating. He completed
his post-graduate specialization in London.
From an early age
he sought to combine the use of the ancient techniques of the calligrapher's
art with the imaginary and spontaneous letter forms of his own time. As
a teenager his first ambition was to be "The Queen's Scribe"
and a close second was to inscribe and illuminate the Bible.
His talents were soon
recognized. At the age of 20, while still a student himself, he was appointed
a visiting lecturer (professor) at the Camberwell College of Art, London.
Within six years he became the youngest artist calligrapher chosen to
take part in the Victoria and Albert Museum's first International Calligraphy
Show after the war and appointed a scribe to the Crown Office at the House
of Lords. In other words, he became "The Queen's Scribe."
Since then, in conjunction
with a wide range of other calligraphic projects, he has continued to
execute Historic Royal documents including Letters Patent under The Great
Seal and Royal Charters. He was decorated by the Queen with the Medal
of The Royal Victorian Order (MVO) which is awarded for personal services
to the Sovereign in 1985.
Jackson is an elected
Fellow and past Chairman of the prestigious Society of Scribes and Illuminators,
and in 1997, Master of 600-year-old Guild of Scriveners of the city of
London. His personally innovative work and inspirational teaching, together
with books, a film series and exhibitions in Europe, North America, Puerto
Rico, Australia and China have led to his being widely acknowledged as
a seminal influence on the growth of Western calligraphy over the past
25 years. In 1980, he wrote The Story of Writing which has since been
published in many editions and seven languages. His 30-year retrospective
exhibition, Painting With Words, premiered at the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota in August 1988 and traveled to thirteen
museums and galleries.
Since the time of
his first lectures in New York and Puerto Rico (1968), Donald Jackson
has been a very stimulating influence on the growth of modern Western
calligraphy in the United States through the many workshops and lectures
he has given. It was the first of the International Assembly of
Lettering Artists seminars, inspired by Jackson, which brought him to
Saint John's University for the first time in 1981. He has since attended
and lectured at several other of these annual Assemblies including those
held at Saint John's University in 1984 and 1990. Jackson returned again
to Saint John's in the summer of 1996 to serve as one of the keynote speakers
at Servi Textus: The Servants of the Text, a symposium which included
a calligraphy exhibition featuring Jackson's work along with that of other
artists, many of whom were his past students and past associates of his
atelier.
Jackson's studio/workshop
at the Calligraphy Center in Wales is the only calligraphy atelier in
the United Kingdom where artist calligraphers are still regularly employed
as assistants maintaining the highest traditions of his ancient art in
a modern context.
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