Original or print? What you are paying for

A paint is a print of a composed design. An original is one sheet written by a calligrapher's hand. That is the whole difference, and it is why one starts at AED 60 and the other at AED 550.

What a calligraphy paint is

The phrase is set in a real typeface in Mashq Studio — the letterforms are vector, shaped and spaced by us, never drawn by an image model. We print it to order on cotton canvas or Canson 310gsm paper, in our own UAE workshop, in 5–7 working days. Rolled A3 canvas is AED 60; framed A3 in one of eight hand-finished mouldings is AED 150; A2 framed is AED 245; the largest sizes run to AED 1,100. Every copy is identical to the picture on its page, and the same design can be printed again.

What an original is

An original is a single sheet: ink on paper, written by hand by Ahmed Alhawary, Anwar Alhulwani or Rasha Kasim, signed by the artist, photographed as it is. Nothing is printed. If the piece is in hand, the sheet in the photograph is the sheet that reaches you, and it is in the UAE now. If it is written to order, the artist writes the line again in 3–4 weeks — a second sheet in the same hand, not a copy. Prices run from AED 550 to AED 8,265; framing with glass is a flat AED 300 for UAE deliveries.

Which one to choose

• A paint when you want a phrase on a wall, at a size and in a frame you choose, at a price that lets you buy two.
• An original when you want the hand — the pen's pressure, the ink's pooling, the artist's signature — and a single object nobody else has.

Both are made or checked in the UAE, both carry the same flat delivery (AED 50 per order in the UAE, AED 250 worldwide), and both can be gift-wrapped with a card and no price. See the calligraphy paints and the originals.