Attong's tiny studio apartment is crowded with the tools of his trade. There are jars of pens and pencils and brushes; bottles of different shapes and sizes containing different kinds of inks. Sheets of handmade paper from India, Holland, Brazil, some costing up to $150 each, lie on a table, delicately speckled with the material of which they are made: banana stems, mulberry leaves, strands of silk. Shelves are lined with books on writing styles, mediaeval illumination, and old maps. A computer gives a blue glow to the dark room.

Mostly, however, the small apartment is filled with Attong himself, six foot three inches of him, and a constant stream of talk, always bursting with enthusiasm and anecdotes.

"I'm a member of three lists on the Net - handwriting, graphology, calligraphy - and we talk about the development of the alphabet and writing," he says. "I'm strong on paleography, the study of the development of alphabets and scripts - as you get an understanding of how alphabets looked."

Lower case (common) letters, he explained, only developed around 100 AD. Before that all were upper case. The common letters were invented for speed. There's a cursive italic script that's fast enough for note taking. It's the materials you used which dictated what you were able to do. Ancient cuneiform, which was written with wedge-shaped reeds on soft clay tablets, couldn't make circles - hence its angular look. You must know what's possible. People say, for instance, that ballpoint pens are detrimental to your writing. They're not. The problem is that people don't know how to write properly. If you keep that in mind the pen won't run off the page. Ballpoints have less control so you need to exercise more control, but he has letters written in italic script with ballpoint and they are astonishingly beautiful. Italics use a thin upstroke and a thick downstroke with an even pressure and it's best to learn it to music.

He sings an aria's 3/3 line. "You hear it?" he asks. "One-two-three, one-two-three: thin-up-stroke, thick-down-stroke. When students get into the rhythm it keeps the shape of their letters: the size, the spacing is correct because if you go too high it's out of rhythm. I put on music to work and it affects my speed. If it's a fast aria I'm not as neat."

All that apropos to a remark that italic script was slow for taking notes.

He was born on August 10, 1974, the second of Willan and Judy Ann Attong's four children, of fourth generation North China stock. "A hard-working Saturday child," he says with a laugh. "My grandfather went to China and met his half-brother for the first time. It turned out he is a calligrapher for the Chinese government. I nearly fainted when I heard that."

Although Attong came to calligraphy by coincidence a mere seven years ago, during his years in Presentation college, he found himself changing his handwriting a dozen times, starting in Form Three and increasing in the sixth form, mainly to be able to take faster notes. By then, however, he'd been bitten.

One day Attong's older brother copied some Old English script from a Letraset alphabet and showed him. Impressed, Attong studied it and realized it really required a pen with an angular bib. A friend, Ian Lee, gave him a calligraphy set and he tried it. "It was so easy, I was stunned," he recalls. "That started me off."

I recall the Vere Foster penmanship book of my childhood, and he frowns in disapproval. Attong explains that that style was based on copperplate script - thin upstroke and thick downstroke. On the downstroke the pen's nib opens up with increasing pressure and leaves more ink. Though it's the most common style taught, copperplate is more difficult, its motor skills harder to acquire, than the elegant italic, which developed in the 1450s.

The talk drifts from the Renaissance style of writing (italic bespeaks its Italian origin), to the pens they used - goose quills, once reeds became inconvenient. He dives into his dark studio and emerges with a long feather whose tip has been heat-hardened, cut and split into a nib.

Attong has sought goose feathers from the zoo, but he's used macaw and cobo, which are also both good. It can't be any old feather, though, because some don't perform well on the paper. But a good quill is still the best instrument for a calligrapher because of the organic material's flexibility. A very thin metal nib widens nicely on the downstroke, but on the upstroke it's liable to snag on any irregularity of the paper and splatter ink.

We have no reeds here, but bamboo, though far more difficult to shape, can make good nibs. The wood must be completely dry, or else it absorbs the ink and you have to dip too often. The ornamental Chinese bamboo is good for fine work. The truth is, you can write with anything once you have an idea of the script although some, Celtic for example, can be difficult.

After A-Levels, Attong worked at the Holiday Inn, briefly, and then taught geography at St Mary's College. He began buying calligraphy books and materials, giving calligraphy classes, delivering lectures on the subject, trying new "hands" or writing styles such as Roman Caps and Textura Quadrata - the basis of the Gothic styles. And he began experimenting with papermaking.

"I make my own paper, inks, pens," he says. "One book referred to handmade paper and the first I tried was papyrus paper because since I was a child I liked Egyptian mythology and I saw papyrus in a pond. I cut it, pounded it flat and made the paper. It fell apart but it was a start. It's a whole different field in itself. You have to know about acidity levels, dyes, the percentage of cotton, hot or cold press. I had no idea but it's only natural for a calligrapher because it's the surface you're working on."

Then in 1996 he taught his students what he'd learnt. They entered some handmade paper for a Niherst recycling competition and came first. The solitude was hard, though. Attong realized he could go no further on his own, but there was no one to carry him further. Every class he joined, three in all, asked him to be a tutor rather than a student. "The first two times I was flattered but the third time I wanted to cry," he admits.

A two-month summer trip to New York opened Attong's eyes. He saw exhibitions of calligraphy, bought books and equipment. He produces a small, square bottle of Japanese sumi, or stick ink. "It's the best ink, it comes hard like a stone and you grind it and add liquid to suit the consistency you're looking for," he says. "It's so black it glows, it lives on paper and any paper accepts it. The pen just flows over the paper, so wonderful."

Most importantly, in New York he met professional calligraphers. He was offered gratis a post-advanced course from Melissa Titone, the president of the Long Island Society of Scribes, and Attong's natural talent dazzled his tutor. "The things you've done because you were alone are way beyond us," said Titone. "We never had to make ink or paper or nibs."

Back in Trinidad things were picking up. Attong was holding classes, designing logos, honour scrolls, wedding invitations. He launched a line of hand-made stationery. He was accepted into the UK Society of Scribes and Illuminators. His day job teaching geography grew onerous, and he made a decision to become a full-time professional calligrapher.

"It's been hard but it's really enjoyable. I have no regrets," he says. "Besides, I'm young and if it doesn't work I can always get a job."