Beryl Austoni

Beryl was taught to write using the Italic font when she was 9 years old.

In her last year at Primary School she loved Friday mornings when she had handwriting practise and got to use coloured inks which came in a bottle that had to be carefully balanced on the front of the desk where the inkwell was. It was impressed on her that these inks were very costly 6 shillings & 9 pence in 1957, which is now 34p! After primary school she still continued to write in an Italic font and it formed how she still writes.

When Beryl moved to the North East she discovered that many people still did Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, so eventually she joined a class to refresh what she had originally started 60 years before.

She learned new fonts and very much enjoys Uncials which is similar to the one used by the monks at Lindisfarne to write the famous Lindisfarne Gospels. She uses this each year to add names to a church Memorial Book in Whitley Bay.

For our Heritology certificates Beryl uses Foundational font which is simple to read.

When Beryl is completing the certificates she sits in silence and sometimes pretends she’s one of those monks up on Lindisfarne, writing the Gospels on vellum all day every day with just candlelight.

When she stands up from a long session her back aches and thinks the monks must have suffered too in colder darker conditions. But she also smiles that she has the same badge of honour, an inky forefinger from gripping her dip pen for many hours.

She hopes to continue writing beautifully for the rest of her life as it is when the mind can be quiet in this noisy modern world.