Walk into a Birmingham boutique this month in search of a gift for your sweetheart, and you might spot Grace Hall at a small table in the corner with her engraving drill, personalizing a perfume bottle in her signature hand. It’s mesmerizing work—the way she carves names into glass, the drill’s whir “just loud enough to call attention and pull people over.”
That same appeal has carried her across the country, including trips to New York, Charleston, Nashville, and Savannah, where she’s engraved pieces for companies like Ketel One and Guinness. National brands now call on her to add a graceful human touch to their launches and media nights, sending her from local boutiques to rooftops and studios in Manhattan. When Ketel One introduced Patrick Schwarzenegger as its first-ever spirit advisor, Grace was stationed at the entrance, engraving espresso martini glasses for every guest who walked in. Influencers, editors—the entire event orbiting around this new partnership—yet lines still formed at her table, where each glass left with a name shaped by her hand.
In Her Studio
At home in Cahaba Heights, Grace works in a sunlit room framed by a bay window overlooking magnolia branches and Japanese maples. Sugar, her Maltese, trots in and out as she settles at a partners desk made of antique wood, handed down through her husband’s family. Her pens rest within fingertip reach; her nibs are lined like tools in a jeweler’s tray. This is where she becomes an artist at work, and the tempo of her day shifts accordingly.
“You can’t multitask while you do it,” she says. “Your heart rate has to be slow enough that your hand isn’t shaky.” She listens to sermons, podcasts, and sometimes the radio call of Alabama basketball. “The pace of the game keeps my pace steady,” she says. Every hour, she pauses to stretch, reset, and return to the page with a steadier hand.
Grace first fell in love with calligraphy as a child in the Deep South, watching wedding invitations arrive in lettering so graceful she tried to mimic the forms herself. The fascination returned in her twenties. “I became enthralled by the process,” she says. What began as a single class became years of practice—“years before my work was, in my mind, worth charging anyone for.”
She’s now trained in copperplate, Spencerian, and English round hand, having studied under six Master Penmen, including former White House calligraphers. “Once you understand the structure, you know which lines can stand a little rebellion,” she says. Her signature style reflects that freedom: rounded, elegant, lifted with flourishes that move like silk.
Her heart still belongs to the projects that ignited her passion. “Invitations are the first impression your guests are getting of your event,” she says. “When someone sees their name written beautifully amidst a stack of bills, it tells them they’re treasured. It tells them someone is looking forward to their presence.” Being chosen to create those first impressions—by a bride, a committee, a family—“is never lost on me.”
A One-of-a-Kind Invitation
Grace felt honored when Antiques in the Gardens asked her to create this year’s gala invitation, and she expected to lean on her familiar forms. Instead, they presented an 1800s writing sample: angular, crisp, nothing like her wedding scripts. “It couldn’t have been further from my work,” she says. They wanted a hand reminiscent of a foxhunting invitation.
She spent a month studying, sketching, and retraining her muscle memory. “There were hours of study and repetition to break the muscle memory of everything rounded and familiar,” she says. During an international calligraphy convention in Virginia, she toured a historic home and discovered a set of organ trays labeled in handwriting nearly identical to the gala sample. “When I saw the handwriting on those trays, it felt like everything was really coming together,” she says. Those lines found their way into her final hand—a bespoke script used once, made for a single, memorable night in Birmingham.
Beyond the Page
Her calligraphy often lives beyond the page. A leather-burning pen lets her foil luggage tags and journals. The engraving drill allows her to carve into glass, ceramics, and even stone. She engraves everything from lipsticks to acetate hair combs. “In a world where online shopping has become so prevalent, retailers are finding creative ways to bring people back into stores—something you can only get in person,” she says. And she loves being part of that return.
Though she now travels for national brands, Birmingham still has her heart—a place where brides, mothers, and hostesses believe there is nothing more meaningful than something written just for them. “I have friends in other cities who can only treat calligraphy as a hobby because their markets don’t value the tradition the way we do here,” she says. “I’m fortunate to live where people still treasure the handwritten word.”
Grace delights in bringing the beauty of a personal touch where no one expects it.
“If something doesn’t get up and walk off the table, I’m going to find a way to personalize it.”
Discover more of Grace’s work at @gracecalligraphy and gracecalligraphy.com.
I’m fortunate to live where people still treasure the handwritten word.
When someone sees their name written beautifully amidst a stack of bills, it tells them they’re treasured. It tells them someone is looking forward to their presence.