Edged brush writing is an unexplored phenomenon. Discovered by the Romans 2000 years ago, it was used to design and write the most famous and important capital letter form: the Trajan letters.

In the middle of the old forum in Rome stands Trajan's Column. It was built as a monument to the Emperor Trajan and shows scenes of his battle victories. At its base is an inscription which dedicates the column to Trajan. Created around 113AD. It is unusual in that it contains nineteen letters of the modern English alphabet and is almost complete and very well preserved, despite centuries of pollution and restoration efforts. Ever since the Renaissance, lettering artists have wondered how the letters were designed. It was only the discovery by Edward Catich in the 1930s of many irregularities and inconsistencies in the letter forms that we now know the letters were quickly written and not drawn or laboured over.

Catich published a book in 1968 called The Origin of the Serif. He showed conclusively that the most famous Roman inscription, the Trajan Inscription, was made as follows. A Roman Scribe wrote with a flat, chisel-shaped brush very quickly on to marble. There were just a few strokes used to make each letter. After writing, the letter forms were carved out with a chisel. After carving, the cut letters were painted in red to stand out from the white marble background. The conclusion Catich comes to is that it was only the action of this particular kind of brush which gave all the letters their unique shapes. The carving played no part in the letter design.

My book Formal Brush Writing builds on the profound discoveries of Edward Catich to show how all the subtle and prodigious features of the Trajan alphabet result directly from writing with a brush.