Tuscan Wine

A second wine label for you: Brusco dei Barbi 2008.


It's easy to head straight for the ones with crests, swirls and embossing, but I was more attracted to this snappy and sharp text on what was a clean black background before I scraped it off the bottle. It has a 1960s Italian look, like a book cover; and the fiery colours are almost devilish. The bottles looked great side-by-side on the shelf. To make it even better, there's a crest on the back after all.

Wine Labels & Calligraphy

I give you my wine label find of the year so far.

I enjoy the contents, but the label is very important in swaying me to spend my pounds on a bottle. This one was brought by a guest, but I certainly would have headed straight for it in a shop. Many of the dark lines in the design are gold on the label; and pomegranates are one of my favourite devices. Here's the back.
Joe Staples showed me the work of the calligrapher and wine label artist Jordan Jelev at this site.

... which leads on to Niels Shoe Meulman's work under the title of Calligraffiti, much of which is collected in a desirable book. Both of these artists mix the density of European scripts with the flair of Islamic calligraphy with a poise that I envy.