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C.P. Zaner's "Ornamental Penmanship"

Having made a good start on my study of Spencerian penmanship, using the 19th century exercise books of Platt Rogers Spencer as reprinted by Mott Media, I decided to look at another early treatise (from 1920) on ornamental penmanship, that of C.P. Zaner, available in PDF format from the IAMPETH web site (http://www.iampeth.com/ADOBE_PDFs/Zaner - Lessons in Ornamental Penmanship.pdf).

Among the preliminary remarks, I found the following sage advice on clothing:

"Wear a rather light-weight, loose-fitting coat; rather large in the sleeve and loose at the armpit. Cut the under sleeve off at the elbow and remove your cuff, and usually roll up the shirt sleeve within the coat sleeve."

I'm not sure precisely what he has in mind here, but for some reason it reminded me of the Amazon warriors who bound or cut off their right breast so as not to interfere with their archery.
 
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