Writing: Making your Mark, The British Library, 26 April-27 August 2019

We live in a world characterized by the apparent explosion in the digital means of communication. For some, this suggests that the physical act of ‘writing’ as it has been handed down over the generations is becoming an increasing irrelevance. And yet, as Ewan Clayton points out in the book which accompanies the exhibition, we should beware of simplistic assertions that overlook the rich ecology of writing tools that are developing.

In this impressively ambitious exhibition, Clayton and a small team of curators from the British Library have assembled a collection of around 100 objects in order to ‘learn more about different writing systems across the globe, appreciate the beauty of writing where functionality and aesthetics meet, and feel empowered to enter the debate about its future.’

The exhibition is grouped thematically into five main sections. ‘The origins of writing’ contains examples showing how writing emerged in Mesopotamia at some point during the late fourth millennium BC, but also at other times in Egypt, China, the Indus Valley and the South Pacific.

The section headed ‘Writing systems and styles’ shows the development of scripts such as the Roman cursive of a scroll from Ravenna of AD 572, the Anglo-Saxon Insular Half Uncial of the Lindisfarne Gospel of AD 700, the 14th century formal Gothic of the Gorleston Psalter, together with early printed books such as Nicolas Jenson’s printed Cicero of 1470 and Aldus Manutius’ Virgil of 1501 – both juxtaposed with their incomparable handwritten forebears.

The section, ‘Materials and technology’, opens with Annet Stirling’s carving of a Jeanette Winterson poem and includes, amongst other things, a 1900-year-old pottery shard on which is brush-written a Greek sex worker’s licence to ply her trade!

Different types of instructional aid are displayed in the section, ‘People and writing’, such as a 2000-year-old wax tablet showing a student’s (faltering) attempt to copy the master’s Greek exemplar. Of particular interest are Mozart’s handwritten record of his compositions, James Joyce’s notes for Ulysses, and – heartbreakingly – Captain Robert Scott’s last entry into his notebook, ‘For God’s sake, look after our people.’

The section concludes with examples of some different uses of writing – for example, as a source of protest (recent graffiti from Syria), or as an expression of community, as exemplified by a video of the impressive French/Tunisian graffiti artist, eL Seed, who movingly describes his work as ultimately about the connections it has enabled him to form with other people – echoing Martin Buber’s comment (quoted by Clayton elsewhere) that ‘all real living is meeting’. 

The exhibition ends with a video recording of various anonymous individuals offering their reflections on the theme, ‘The future of writing’.

The curators have made the commendable effort not to tax the viewer with over-elaborate descriptions of the pieces on display. However, this runs the risk that historical and socio-political context is at times lost. Anyone attending the exhibition would therefore be well advised to purchase the accompanying book, which amplifies in considerable detail the main themes of the exhibition and contains fine essays by Clayton and Stan Knight amongst others.