Marie Pavie | |
Occupation: | calligrapher |
Years Active: | c. 1608 |
Notable Works: | Le premier essay de la plume de Marie Pavie(1608) |
Marie Pavie (fl. 1600) was a calligrapher active in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century and possibly the first woman to have published a copybook, Le premier essay de la plume de Marie Pavie, under her own name.
Pavie, along with Dutch calligrapher Maria Strick, the other contender for the position of first woman to publish a copybook under her own name, were part of a vanishingly small group of professional early-modern women calligraphers. Little is known about Pavie's life and there are only two copies of her book extant, and one of those partial: the Newberry Library in Chicago holds the only known complete copy,[1] and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris has some leaves.[2] Copybooks tended to receive heavy usage and many have not survived.