ARDWAN REED [RRC]
Ardwan Reed is drawn from the reed pen of the oldest manuscripts in the Rbai Rafid Collection, the largest collection of Mandaic manuscripts in the world, where I grew up. Its forms carry the movement of the qalam, the swell and release of a stroke as the hand crosses the page. It is the face I designed for the printed edition of the Ginza d'Hiia, where it had to hold 608 pages of sacred text without ever feeling mechanical. Reed is made for long, continuous reading in a manuscript register, warm and authoritative yet consistent enough for print and screen. I designed it from inside the tradition, from the way the oldest hands actually moved, as someone who grew up among those manuscripts rather than studying them from outside.
