Proud as I am of my garden in the summer, the yard really never looks better than it does in the snow, with icicles hanging down from the old, rickety shed and white mounds covering the fence… And check out the wall that greeted me when I opened the door this morning!
Now that my Internet connection has finally been restored, here’s wishing everyone on the East Coast a happy last-blast-of-winter…
We talk a lot about writing on this blog, and inspiration and creativity. But I’m wondering: what are you reading?
I just finished Janet Malcolm’s awesome work on the relationship between authors and their subjects, The Journalist and the Murderer, whose smart analysis of the story behind Fatal Vision is relevant to both fiction and non-fiction writers. Before that, Rebecca Goldstein’s Mind-Body Problem. I’m not sure what I’ll read next.
What about you?
Image by Wonderlane.
Karen recently struck up a conversation with Norwegian artist Christian Skagen, who shared some of the vibrant ink-and-hot-pressed-paper drawings he’s been making for a series entitled “Horizontal Fields.” Here, for example, is a drawing Christian made with a Sailor Sapporo EF, 300gsm Arches HP, and J. Herbin’s Rose Tendresse:
Here are close-ups of the three works that are framed at the top of this post (be sure to click the image to see a larger version and appreciate the full intricacy and texture of the lines):
NY Times writer Patricia Cohen had a fascinating article in the Arts section on February 11, 2010. It was titled” “Where Faulkner Found His People: Characters’ Names Are Inside a Plantation Diary the Writer Knew Well.”
“The climactic moment,” the article begins, “in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their ’scarred and cracked backs’ and ‘yellow pages scrawled in fading ink’ –proof of his family’s slave-0wning past.” 
The diary that was a source for Faulkner for names, incidents and details was penned in the mid-1800s by Francis Terry Leak, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi. His great-grandson, Edgar Wiggin Francisco, Jr., was a friend of Faulkner’s since childhood. Mr. Francisco’s son, now 79, recalled the writer’s frequent visits throughout the 1930s, and said Faulkner was fascinated with the diary’s several volumes. Mr. Francisco said he saw them in Faulkner’s hands and recalled that he “was always taking copious notes.”
Sally Wolff-King, a scholar in Southern literature at Emory University who discovered the connection between Faulkner and the journals, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime literary find.” A short preview of her findings was available in the fall 2009 issue of The Southern Literary Journal; her book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Diary,” is due out in June from Louisiana State University Press. 
Has a chance find of a diary in a friend’s house, a yard sale, flea market, antique store or junk shop given you a character or inspired a story?
Let me preface this by saying that nearly everyone keeps a variety of different notebooks, made by different brands, in regular rotation. We know that. We endorse that. And we all have different needs/preferences in terms of writing instruments; fountain pen users love our heaviest, 90g paper, while others need nothing more than a few pages of lightweight 64g to receive their gel pens and rollerballs and pencils.
But Karen and I were nonetheless intrigued to see pen maker Brian Goulet’s recent vlogs over at Ink Nouveau. As you may remember, Brian likes to subject the notebooks and stationery that his company sells to various acts of ink-related torture. A couple weeks ago, he put a Habana, a Webbie, and a Moleskine to a head-to-head bleedthrough test with a couple drops of J. Herbin. That video’s embedded above, so you can see the results for yourself.
Brian’s since done more detailed comparisons of Moleskine vs. Habana and the Moleskine vs. Webbie to discuss size, thickness, price, and all the other factors that help determine which notebooks best fit your needs. In a world where you can’t always try before you buy, they’re great tools to aid your decisions.
To learn more about Brian and his pens, check out this profile at Rhodia Drive!
I recently had an email from my friend, Kass Speerly of The Ink Sampler, asking me about J. Herbin’s ink – l’Encre des Vaisseaux – The Ink of Ships. “I’ve seen the logo for the bottles of this ink before,” she wrote, “but never the ink. I assume it is no longer produced, but I am interested in some information about it, such as what the color was, what it’s primary use was intended for, when it was produced and when it went out of production. Also, curiously, could it ever be produced again.”
Those are all good questions for which I don’t have a ready answer. But I will try to find out over the course of this year. Some information may be gleaned from the collective memory of the J. Herbin staff in France. I also plan to add a Wiki on historical J. Herbin inks to jherbin.com, so people anywhere in the world can contribute what they know or have discovered so we all can benefit.
The one piece of information I have about The Ink of Ships is that it was created in M. Herbin’s workshop prior to 1700. The rest is my conjecture…
Some great new stuff at our Flickr group! For example, this sketch by Sophie, who’s also posted some beautiful Handalas, modge-podge photo transfers, and a fun, off-kilter watercolor:
See more of Sophie’s work on her blog and at her Flickr page. Also not to be missed: Stephanie’s vibrant mandalas, and this lovely whisper of a drawing by Gentian.
Thanks so much for sharing your work with us!
As long as we’re revisiting old Quo Vadis ads, I figure I might as well retell the story of our most popular planning format…
Though it seems like one of those things that must have been around forever, the idea of weekly time management—at least as it applies to planners—didn’t exist until 1952. The inventor? A French doctor named F.G. Beltrami, who invented the “one week on two pages” planner format when he stamped a grid onto the white pages of a notebook. (Up till then, appointment books were like diaries, with one day per page.)
Dr. Beltrami called his invention the “Agenda Planning Diary.” His friends and family were so enthusiastic about it that he eventually decided to switch careers and form his own company to manufacture his creation. In 1954, Editions Quo Vadis was formed in Marseilles, France—and has been turning out new Agendas ever since.
Curious about the name “Quo Vadis”? Read Karen’s post about the topic.
Photo by Daniel Azarian
Tell us a bit about yourself — where are you from, where do you live, and when did you start writing?
I live in Philadelphia, in a small village just outside the city, so I have the best of both worlds. I know some of my family lived here in the early 1800s and after a brief foray into Ohio, we returned.
I’ve been writing all my life. I have a copy of my first story, “The Tiny Party,” about a fairy named Flash who told her sister Tiny to arrange a birthday party for her. Tiny did so, and invited Jane, Mary, Sally and Bubble. There was a chocolate cake with white icing and pink candies. Flash collected birthday loot of flowers, ribbons and socks. At another time I will tell you about The Fairy Wedding, when Glisen got married and Bubble played the organ. These exciting tales are written in pencil on yellow tablet paper. No idea of Clairefontaine paper and Herbin inks then! As I grew up, I whipped off a poem for every event, some of which my mother saved for me. There was never any question in my mind that the main purpose of life was to write about it.
When and how did you get into fountain pens and ink? Do you have a favorite pen or ink, either generally or for specific purposes?
I got my first fountain pen, a Waterman which I still use, when I was in my early twenties, a gift from my husband. I’ve been passionate about inks for about five years but I’m a lifelong diarist and I’ve collected notebooks all my life. Recently I discovered the colony of those who love pens, inks, and notebooks on the internet, where I spend happy hours reading reviews of inks and comparing colors.
A favorite color, no. Not just one. I keep a dozen or so pens in an old moosehead cream jug beside my favorite chair, where I have my morning coffee and start writing. Poets sometimes speak about the duende, invisible spirits who bring us writing. I think they help me choose which pen and ink is right for the day or for a particular task. I tend to keep a special pen for each color, as much as I can. For example, I have Herbin Vert Olive in a vintage green marbleized Shaeffer with gold accents. I might put another green in that pen but never another color. I just realized — this sounds a trifle obsessive, doesn’t it? My blues go in a blue Cavalier Pilot, my favorite just now. I write very small so I like fine or very fine nibs and these Cavaliers are very smooth. Karen Doherty (your colleague, I know) just very graciously gave me some Rose Cyclamen, which I lovelovelove. I bought a special pen for it, a silvery-pink Cavalier.
Can you tell us a little more about “Les Encres de Monsieur Herbin”?
Anyone else remember spinning pens during high school math and science classes? A simple, around-the-thumb loop was the only trick I ever came close to mastering (and I daresay I’ve since lost all aptitude), but there was a period in, like, 9th and 10th grade when pen spinning seemed to be everywhere.
Of course, nobody at my school had anything on the spinners at this Hong Kong tournament, some of whom even use special weighted pens and practice at home for hours. Apparently, you can’t actually write with those pens, but one mother’s comments may nontheless strike home for us fountain pen collectors. “The only thing I don’t like about it is he wastes a lot of money because he spends a lot of money on pens,” she says of her competitive son. As for the practicing, she continues, “I think it is a spirit that should be encouraged.”
