The Material Culture of Islamic Calligraphy
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, MA
The 2026 Norma Jean Calderwood Lecture Calligraphy is the most recognizable of Islamic arts, and it is often seen in its finished form—an inscription written on paper; carved in stone, wood, or ivory; cast in metal; or woven into fabric. Yet calligraphy always begins as a trace left by a pen, a practice sustained by a rich material culture. Cultural historian İrvin Cemil Schick looks at the wide array of tools used in the artistic practice of Islamic calligraphy, such as reed pens, penknives, cutting boards, inks, inkwells, papers, and scissors. Speaker: İrvin Cemil Schick, Cultural historian İrvin Cemil Schick is a cultural and intellectual historian specializing in the Ottoman Empire. He holds Ph.D.s from MIT and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, and has taught at Harvard University, MIT, and Istanbul Şehir University. He has also held guest positions at Boston University, Sabancı University, Boğaziçi University, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His principal research interests include the Islamic arts of the book, particularly calligraphy, illumination, and marbling; gender, sexuality, spatiality, and the body in Islam; animals and the…