My Love-Hate Relationship With Victorian Lettering

If it sounds weird, hear me out…

"What is history, but a fable agreed upon?" Napoleon

"History is written by the victors." Winston Churchill

"History is told by the winners." Dan Brown

Will we ever know who said it first? Whoever it was, they ain't neva lied. 

I've got a confession to make.

I've been in denial about one of the styles of lettering I've been most enamored with since I started lettering again last year. It's gothic lettering's striking complement, victorian lettering.

After the entire world saw footage of George Floyd's life snuffed out, recounted Breonna Taylor's life taken at her own home, and racked up countless other hashtags of black bodies, it became increasingly difficult for me to think about the fact that the name of one of the styles of lettering I liked most actually reminded me of oppression. 

I don't know how true it is for other black peoples, but for me one of the issues of being a black person who makes art and also happens to be American is that the ancestry cannot be separated from the oppression and simultaneous assimilation of the culture of the oppressor. While you're just trying to make art, nine times out of ten, your work will be touched by those references, whether by intention or not. Some of the most successful black artists like Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker actually choose to meet that tendency head on to create powerfully, provoking work. 

I didn't recall any of these artists when I started lettering, unfortunately...It might have helped me get over it faster. And call me crazy, but, it felt embarrassing to be drawn so much to Victorian letterforms as a black woman because, while the letters are named after a queen, they felt so thoroughly steeped in historically not being black...and maybe that said something about me that I was so into them? I was using them, but I felt bad about it. 

How weird is that? They're only letters, right?

They are except that when you’re black, you almost have to question everything. Strangely enough, it didn't dawn on me to actually look up the period to see how black women related to it-and were possibly (and typically) written out of it. If I had, I would've found material to suggest that, while slavery had ended-and classicism was likely a swiftly growing issue, even some black women in America (called Black Victorias) partook in the victorian styling of the time. Like bosses.

Of course, they may have had no choice...and had their ancestors never been taken from their homelands who knows what their attire would be? But, the sheer level of self-actualization they seem to display, even while wrapped in all the hallmarks of Victorian living, is remarkable to me. 

I guess that's as good a pass as any. 

No, victorian letters, named after a Queen that was given a black girl as a gift, will likely never dismantle racism. But the history tells of a time when black women (including that young girl), were capable, intelligent and held more titles than that of the descendants of slaves. They were chameleons and survivors during a time when they had to accept and adapt to whatever life threw at them. That's good to know. It makes me feel like family again.

What attracts me most to victorian lettering is the over-the-topness of the details in the letters. I ooooh and aaaah over those details like a little kid with a new toy. The letters are as well-dressed as the ladies in those old, vintage photos. Even the compositions that victorian letters normally inhabit many times show insane solutions to composition and filling space with sprawling, rounded flourishes and ornamental designs. Perhaps, that kind of opulence plays right into the idea of "material consumption" at the heart of hip hop culture that Wiley refers to in his work. 

But, then, I am but a product of my environment.  

Stand tall, black woman. ✊🏾