Saturday, June 06, 2009

dZi Monograms: Gzi Yig Style Tibetan Calligraphy

One of the many, happy by-products of our recent Tibetan calligraphy contest is seen above: gzi yig, a monogrammatic style supposedly based on dZi beads! I've never seen these before, but I am certain that now they'll be seen all over -- usually as tattoos (!) -- and while I am conflicted about tattoos (my generation doesn't care much for them) I know that many people feel otherwise. Speaking personally, I'd rather have this embroidered on the bathrobe.

Best advice in matters like these is to contact Tashi Mannox in London: he's the Tibetan tattoo design king.

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3 reader comments:

inkessential said...

yep, spotted this a few days ago, and like you have never seen before, intriguing.....

thanks for the plug... here is the link to my tattoo design website, which maybe more appropriate than my calligraphy website for tattoo designs in Tibetan scripts:

www.inkessential.com

Andrew West said...

It's really beautiful isn't it. There is another example of gzi yig calligraphy in Indian Scripts in Tibet. I once thought about trying to make a digital gzi yig font, but it's probably not that easy.

Editor said...

This is a case where there would be a small but steady demand. There is also the issue of preservation to think about. The day will come, Andrew, when certain fonts will only exist because you preserved them digitally (with copious annotation, of course).

Keep up the good work.