The copper plate style is actually named after a printing process. Cast your minds back to the Europe in the 17th and 18th century, where England was one of the foremost trading powers. All its commercial activity needed scribes and clerks to quickly produce legible contracts and invoices. There were hundreds of writing masters and they competed for students by publishing copybooks. Fun fact, the writing instrument du jour was a quill, a goose feather, and the United Kingdom imported 27 million quills every year from St. Petersburg. The Bank of England ordered 1.5 million because their clerks used about 5 quills every day. The script that these master scribes developed is called English Round Hand and to reproduce the copybooks, the round hand was etched onto metal plates made of, you guessed it, copper. So really when you think of it, we're celebrating the art of master scribes as well as master engravers. One of these master engravers was George Beckham and he edited round hand calligraphy pieces from 25 other scribes in the 1740s and that compendium is still available today. This is just one example from the Universal Penman. Since this is a beginner's class, we won't go into flourishing and swashers too much, but you will be practicing to form and write letters in this style.