| Although
brushes have long been widely used for painting, drawing, and writing, both
draftsmen and scribes recognized early that a single, somewhat flexible
tube could be sharpened to a point to transfer a liquid medium to the support
in fine, precisely defined lines. Feathers (quills) and reeds provided the
most useful tools, offering the right combination of flexibility and stiffness,
as well as durability. By the eighteenth century the metal pen emerged,
a manufactured imitation of its natural predecessors. |
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