Gold Leaf and Sheepskin
The fine art of calligraphy

Ben DeRubertis, Sr., a professional calligrapher, has owned the Calligraphy Studio in Cleveland Heights for the past 40 years. Calligraphy, the art of fine penmanship, is as old as handwriting. Origins date back to cave drawings when cavemen communicated pictorially. The Declaration of Independence was penned using calligraphy-styled lettering.

Always interested in art, DeRubertis won a scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art before joining the U.S. Air Force. While enlisted, he attended drafting school and served in the Art and Visual Aids department. During the Eisenhower administration, he used his calligraphy skills in the Social Office of the White House designing and writing invitations and place cards. "Those were exciting times," said DeRubertis, "I saw the Queen Mother, Winston Churchill, John Foster Dulles, and Haile Selassie from Ethiopia."

During this interview, he moved around his cluttered studio with ease, pulling out drawers and art samples, making it hard to believe his age, 77 years old. With a glint in his eye and steady hands, he showed me elegantly written tributes and certificates featuring graceful and consistent lettering. There's a picture on the office wall of Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, receiving a proclamation created by DeRubertis.

How can he possibly hand craft these documents completing a minimum of 3 projects a week? After all, he has to shape each individual letter, space, line, and punctuation while demonstrating consistent style, artistic flair, and accurate text. "Fancy lettering with curlicues looks great, but you still have to be able to read what it says," he cautioned. According to noted calligrapher, Julian Waters, true calligraphy is the art of producing letters that capture the spirit of the text they represent.

DeRubertis starts with a blank piece of paper to create his tributes, certificates of recognition, and diplomas. The companies and professional organizations send him the text honoring outstanding achievements of their employees and group members. He lays out the wording in script or italic lettering using a modified old English font. Using a T-square, he determines where the words go, by section, line, and paragraph. And let's not forget the margins for alignment - it is an exact art form. Ink, brushes, ink nibs (pen points), paint, and different kinds of paper are all tools of the trade. "We used to use more gold leaf paint and higher quality paper, like sheep skin, but now, times have changed with increased costs for labor and supplies," DeRubertis explained.

"Even with the advent of computers, we still get plenty of calls from people and companies who prefer the value of hand-crafted lettering," he added. Fortune 500 companies, Eaton Corporation, Sherwin Williams, and Lincoln Electric are included on his client list. He also does projects for the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Oberlin College, Hiram College, National City Bank, the American Board of Internal Medicine, ASM International, among many others. Advertisement is primarily by word of mouth. Receiving and completing orders, the Calligraphy Studio is still going strong with the assistance of his son, also a calligrapher, Ben Jr.

The Calligraphy Studio is located at 2163 Lee Road, near Cedar, in Cleveland Heights. For more information about calligraphy, contact the Western Reserve Calligraphers, a society of lettering artists, at 440-835-0286.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Susan Schaul, who says the act of writing is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. The challenge lies in getting the pieces to fit together and make sense.

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