Pangur Bán, calligraphy by Denis Brown

Pangur Bán: Celtic art by Denis Brown

a traditional yet contemporary rendering of a 9th century Irish poem

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A ninth century Irish monk praises his cat, named Pangur Ban. The monk compares his own scholarly work of hunting words and wisdom, to that of his cat hunting mice, each enjoying their craft. My interpretation is fairly traditional, but the cat illustration at the base takes the mouse idea into the computer realm- Pangur plays the hunter in the old video game, Pac-Man!

When I began learning calligraphy as a young schoolboy growing up in Dublin, I was fortunate to have one of the world's greatest manuscripts, The Book of Kells, at a thirty minutes bicycle ride from my home.

At that time, they turned a page every day and entrance was free. I recall spending many Saturdays making bicycle pilgrimages to the city centre, to examine the pages on display in the Old Library in Trinity College, with its magnificent aisles of old books stacked from floor to the high arched timber ceiling, and pungently exuding sweet aromas of leather dressing. (An intensity of smell and anticipation I could compare to my first visit to an Amsterdam coffee shop, wafting its own exotic and narcotic aromas!). Following that cultural intoxication in Trinity College I would continue my day in the city with more normal schoolboy activities, such as wasting money in arcade halls of video games!

Now that I recall that aspect of my cultural background, I notice that the virtual pages of those video games showed a remarkably similar, surreal humour and (at that time in the 80's) a similar flatness of graphic image, to the imagery of the insular manuscripts!

 

Detail of Pangur Bán calligraphy

 

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