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The Power of the Pen
In this digital age of texts and emails and WhatsApp and instant communication, receiving a letter – a real, honest-to-God letter handwritten by someone – feels special. In fact, “special” is too weak a word. Receiving a handwritten missive, be it a letter or an invitation, feels marvelous. Receiving a handwritten letter means that you matter to someone.
Adela Chavez knows the power of handwritten communication. As the creative genius behind Mavenette Calligraphy and Design, Adela has helped countless couples curate stationery that is deeply meaningful.
“The stationery you use for an event sets the tone for the whole thing,” Adela said as we chatted in The Brass Vendor Club, a coworking space specifically designed for the wedding and event community. “When you and a designer work to create stationery for your event that incorporates parts of yourself, it lets people know what they can expect.”
Adela wasn’t always a calligrapher and designer. She spent years working for the Dallas Observer and more years waiting tables at Lili’s Bistro on Magnolia. But in 2014, just after buying a house for herself and her two children, she decided to give herself a Christmas gift.
“I bought myself a calligraphy class,” Adela said. “It was a modern calligraphy class taught by a woman named Lauren Essl who used to run Blue Eye Brown Eye. And I can’t really tell you what made me choose it other than thinking “This looks like something that would be fun, so why not take it?’”
And so, a passion was born, and the seeds of a business were planted.
photo credit: Beatbox Portraits
“I loved the class,” Adela remembered. “I loved the format; I loved the way Lauren taught, but what really got me was when I was being raised by my single mother, we lived with my grandparents off and on through most of my childhood, and my grandfather was a commercial sign painter pre-computer, so he did everything by hand. A lot of the mechanics of calligraphy made a lot of sense to me because it was a lot of the things that I learned by watching him as he painted these huge 18-wheelers by hand in the driveway.”
Calligraphy is ancient. It’s handwriting, but it’s handwriting as fine art. For as long as humans have written, people have striven to make their words beautiful. In East Asia and the Islamic world, calligraphers are considered artists of the highest rank. The meaning of the words, combined with the form of the letters, creates a work of art.
Here in the West, calligraphy is usually restricted to announcements, invitations, and certificates. Modern brush calligraphy enjoyed a rise in popularity around the turn of the 21st century, but calligraphy as a whole isn’t considered an art form. But it elevates whatever piece of paper it graces.
Adela understands that a beautiful piece of custom stationery (she designs and prints each piece herself on a letterpress) with carefully calligraphed words means more than the sum of its parts. “It’s hard to explain the tactile and emotional impact of it. I mean, there’s a whole different energy to it. Most of us get a whole bunch of junk mail every day, so to receive a very purposely handwritten announcement or invitation means something. It really is a whole beautiful package that tells you what the celebration will be.”
photo credit: Ann Mark Photography
Of course, handwritten, custom-designed stationery does not come cheap, nor is it a quick process. “I get a lot of ’emergency calligraphy’ emails,” Adela laughed. “People look at modern calligraphy videos and think, ‘Oh, that looks so easy,’ but what they don’t realize is that it’s not easy at all. It’s a very slow process. I’ve timed myself, and a single envelope takes me, by the time I’ve measured and written and proofread, over 10 minutes. For one envelope.”
But it’s the very intense, very deliberate, very time-consuming nature of calligraphy that appeals to Adela. As someone who has dabbled throughout the years with various forms of calligraphy, I can almost grasp it. There is something very meditative about being so deliberate. Every letter, every curlicue must be measured and plotted to fit on a line. Those modern brush calligraphy videos and TikToks? They’re sped up for our short attention spans. In reality, each stroke, each curve is deliberate, meaningful, and slow.
Of course, Adela understands that digital design and printing have their places. “Not to say that digital isn’t beautiful, because it can be. If you want a beautiful, four-color design, digital is the way to go. But a purposely-curated design that the couple and I have created, that brings in parts of their personalities, coupled with a beautiful Spencerian or copperplate script, is really more intimate.”
photo credit: Jordan Taylor Photography
When I asked what she meant, Adela told me a story. “Last fall, I worked with a couple. The bride was half-Filipino, and in the Filipino culture, dragonflies have a special meaning. When you see a dragonfly, it represents a family member who has passed. The bride’s brother had just passed from cancer, and she wanted to incorporate dragonflies into her wedding stationery. So, the invitation had a dragonfly on it, and we made little dragonflies that were the escort cards. The florist wrapped an archway with moss and flowers, and we decorated it with the little paper dragonflies that, because the paper was very delicate, fluttered in the breeze that the guests could take home. It was very tender, very special for her to have her brother there on her wedding day.”
photo credit: Jordan Taylor Photography
After a long and lovely conversation, full of tangents about historical fonts and pen nibs and papers and inks, I asked Adela if she thought her art and her business could continue as the digital age progresses. After all, the digital world moves at the speed of light, and what Adela does is slow, painstaking work.
“What I help people create is really very much more impactful than people initially realize,” Adela said. “People think that stationery is disposable, but it’s actually more than just ephemera. It’s one of the very few tangible things you can keep from an event or a wedding. You keep it because it helps you remember, and it becomes part of your history and your family’s history.”
