After the colouring books for grown-ups trend there have been a few attempts to find the Next Big Thing that could be smuggled in under the ‘mindfulness’ banner: dot-to-dot was one of the most dismal, in my opinion, but I’m more cheerful about a new title in the works from Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint: Scriptorium: Healing the soul with the art of copying by Màlleus (Enrico Ragni).
According to The Bookseller:
‘Màlleus is founder of modern-day scriptorium (i.e. a place to write) Antica Bottega Amaneunse in Recanati, Italy, the biggest scriptorium in the world.
Tonkinson [the publisher who acquired the rights to the work] said: “We’re thrilled to be publishing for an English-speaking audience. It combines mindfulness (the words to copy are chosen with great care for their impact on the copier) and calligraphy, which we know is a hotly tipped trend in the wake of the colouring phenomenon. Rather than having to colour in the lines, though, a reader’s pen or pencil can simply mindfully flow, embedding peaceful thoughts and sentiments as they are copied out.”‘
It’s probably too much to hope for a renaissance in handwriting, but I love the idea of recapturing the art and kinetic sense of beautiful writing in a world of keyboards.