Micrography art

Micrography, also called microcalligraphy, is a Jewish form of calligrams developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam, utilizing minute Hebrew letters to form representational, geometric and abstract designs. Colored micrography is especially distinctive because these rare artworks are customarily rendered in black and white.

Micrography is a distinctly Jewish art that is already in the oldest Hebrew manuscripts that survived in the 10th century. The micrograph expressed in writing in tiny, tiny Hebrew script made use of the texts of the great Masoretic texts, although other biblical texts were also used. This art often adorned the margins of the manuscripts of the Bible, and in miniature script it creates a line of geometric or figurative geometric shapes, sometimes also for illustrative purposes, and is also expressed as a work of art in tiny writing on various materials, Or compressing texts on a certain area in ordinary writing is impossible to contain.

The artwork is created from text that forms an image when viewed at a distance, creating an interplay between the text and image. The Photomosaic, whose tiny individual images form a mosaic when viewed from a distance, is a modern analogue.

There is a relationship between this form of art, employing both digital and analogic symbols, and the restrictions on images found in the second commandment. Micrography provides a unique solution to the visual artist who wishes to remain devout in observation of Jewish law, by using only text, not images per se. As similar restrictions exist in certain Muslim societies, this solution has been adapted in Islamic calligraphy to the Arabic alphabet as well.

Micrography is the name given to painting with the pen. It owes its origin to the scribes (also: calligraphers, literary painters, typists or modists), who were active in Nuremberg soon after the invention of the art of printing.

A calligram is a text visually arranged in a way that it forms an image associated with the text’s contents. It can be a poem, a phrase, or a single word; the visual arrangement can rely on certain use of the typeface, calligraphy or handwriting, for instance along non-parallel and curved text lines, or in shaped paragraphs. The image created by the words illustrates the text by expressing visually what it says, or something closely associated; it can also, on purpose, show something contradictory with the text or otherwise misleading.

Micrography products were written in tiny spaces and put into rings. The underlying texts are often the Lord’s Prayer or individual psalms.

Later, the small words and lines were used to imitate the strokes of the pen and brush, forming figures and whole portraits called calligraphic images, literals, or typefaces. The script then usually contained the story of the person depicted, a lore of the same or biblical passages.