Category RSS Archive for the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ Category

New Electronic Planners vs. Paper Calendars

Posted September 27, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities, Editorial, Pens, Paper & People | 4 comments »

I recently did a major clean-out of old files, clippings and media mentions. One article dropped on the floor on the way to the trash bin, and I picked it up for a last look. It was dated December 29, 1999 and was titled, “Will New Electronic Planners Overtake the Paper Calendar We all Know and Love?”

“Yes, as the millennium draws to a close,” the article gravely intoned, “the calendar world seems headed for a great divide: On the one side stand the doodlers, the note-takers, the defenders of the paper-based system–wall calendars, desk calendars, pocket calendars/organizers–anything to write on or add sticky notes to. On the other are those who aren’t afraid of a little PDA, a Personal Digital Assistant (PalmPilots and the like), and what’s known as “Internet-based calendaring”–the countless calendars/planners offered in Microsoft Outlook, or on Web sites such as Yahoo, Netscape and Visto. Given the usual fate of old-fashioned industries whose markets are invaded by hipper technology, one might expect pen-and-paper calendars to be swiftly blown away by the products of the information age..”

What is funny is that the “leaders in the world of PDAs” the article mentions–Palm Computing, Handspring, Hewlett Packard and Casio–have disappeared or barely rate a mention today as providing calendar products. Handspring, the originator of PalmPilots, went defunct in 2003. Palm, Inc. was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2010, which retired the Palm brand.

12 years later – the two paper calendar companies noted in the article – Filofax and At-A-Glance – are still quite in evidence; as are all the planner/organizer makers from that period: Franklin Covey, Day Runner, Letts of London, Charing Cross, Per Annum, Exacompta, Quo Vadis, Blueline, etc.

Could we have predicted this?

Is it is simple as the statement by one store manager, “people still like to see their own handwriting.” Or is it, as a vice president of The At-A-Glance Group posits, “most people find it easier to retain things if they write it down.”

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An inky mystery

Posted September 26, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities | 2 comments »

While I was sick last month, I started making my way through the Sherlock Holmes mysteries I so loved as a child. Of course, now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to put them down. And I was amused to read the following in The Hound of the Baskervilles:

If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else.

I daresay I’ve never been to a hotel that had fountain pens on hand, let alone a dip pen. But judging from the cheapo Bics they all seem to offer, I’d say very little has changed in the abstract.

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Vintage QV commercials

Posted September 7, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities, Videos | Add your comment »

Karen blogged about this last week, but I’ve finally figured out how to get the embed code to work, so I figured I would highlight one of our favorite vintage Quo Vadis TV commercials. Love the dog in this one… and the special effects:

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Vintage Quo Vadis TV Commercials

Posted August 23, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities, Editorial, Videos | 1 comment »

Remember rabbit ears? 

Here are some old Quo Vadis commercials to enjoy!  In French, of course!

Clique ici!

 

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Snail mail my email

Posted August 8, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities, Pens, Paper & People | 3 comments »

Via our product manager, Ceclia, and the Pen Boutique Facebook page comes word of an interesting new project. As you might expect from the name — Snail Mail My Email — it enables people to email a message to the project’s volunteers, who then write it out by hand and mail it to the recipient.

Ivan Cash, the San Francisco designer and art director who founded SMME, sees it as a “jumpstart to help raise awareness,” according to this CNN article. Personally, I think it’s more interesting for as a bit of creative conceptual art, but the response has been fairly impressive: the team now has 134 international volunteers and has sent thousands of letters.

If you want to participate, email your letter to snailmailmyemail@gmail.com before August 15.

(Or, you know, break out a pen and show off the quirks of your own handwriting.)

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Write to history

Posted August 4, 2011 by
in Cabinet of Curiosities | Add your comment »

Another thing from France that I’ve been meaning to share for a while is this post about the site Dialogus, where you can discuss, ask questions, and engage in a fictive dialogue with historical figures like Marie Antoinette and John F. Kennedy (who answers in perfect French) as well as fictional characters like Emma Bovary and Peter Pan. “Who are you?” someone asked Lolita. “I’m not really sure how to answer that,” she responded.

I’m not aware of anything like this in the US, but it strikes me that this is the Internet at its best — engaging, educational, and diverting in the best sense. If you speak French (or, like me, muddle through), I highly recommend it. There are a few letters in English, too, though the answers strike me as somewhat less spirited.

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Victor Hugo’s ink

Posted July 13, 2011 by
in Beautiful Creations, Cabinet of Curiosities, Pens, Paper & People | 9 comments »

Usually, it helps to take claims of historical authenticity with a grain of salt… That famous dead writers used your notebooks, for example, or that James Dean wore your khakis.

This is closer to the real deal. In 2004, J. Herbin discovered an authorization in its archives by the writer Victor Hugo to produce a black ink especially for him. The authorization remains in the archives, but the recipe has since been remade into a couple of bottles of ink. Karen managed to get her hands on one of them, and was then kind enough to pass it along to me.

This is not a fountain pen ink; Hugo wrote with goose quills, though steel nibs were becoming increasingly popular. Personally, I haven’t had much luck with feathers, but that did not put me off from trying it out with a glass pen. And what fun it was! The ink is shiny, dense, and saturated. It pops on bright white Clairefontaine and looks handsome on my ivory Habana, too. Because it’s so thick, you have to be a little more careful about bleed-through, and clean your pen carefully (and immediately) after you’re done. Still, it’s an awfully fun ink to play with. About the only complaint I have is that the bottle cap’s a bit finicky and is tough to get off and on.

There aren’t very many bottles left, but if it’s something that interests you, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll ask Herbin if they’d be willing to make more.

Here’s a picture of the bottle:

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Making things

Posted July 7, 2011 by
in Beautiful Creations, Cabinet of Curiosities, Pens, Paper & People | 1 comment »

While preparing yesterday’s post on scrapbooking, I was reminded of some photographs I’ve been meaning to share… I’m fortunate to have a cousin who’s a talented goldsmith, and who was also generous enough to make our wedding rings. But cooler than that, almost, was the set of photographs she gave us — twelve pictures she took as she worked to document the process.

As a writer, I’m in awe of people who make things — it’s so satisfyingly real and concrete! And while every job has its own set of satisfactions, these images make it seem like the most amazing thing ever to take a chunk of metal and shape it into something gorgeous and meaningful.

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Bookplates

Posted June 23, 2011 by
in Beautiful Creations, Cabinet of Curiosities, Pens, Paper & People | 3 comments »

In spite of my spouse and friends turning to Kindle and Nook, I am determined to hang on to my home library. I actually should say home “libraries,” since I have bookcases in both my apartment in the city and house. I love my books. I am never without one. Even when I was on canoe trips in the Alaska wilderness I packed along at least one book to read by the campfire at the end of the day’s travel.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on bookplates got me to thinking about designing one of my own.

Bookplates had their start in the 15th century, and by the 1800s many artists and designers were making their own plates. There were very individual–playful, dark, or inspired by a particular event. Bookplates are works of art in their own right. You can see some examples here.

My bookplate design will incorporate the “Blue Duck” icon I use for myself.  (Blue Duck is the name of my kayak.)  I also thought I wanted something different than “Ex Libris.”  Sticking with Latin, I decided on “Ostium” – a word meaning “doorway,” or “entrance” or “(river) mouth.”  This pretty much describes what a book is for me.

What would your bookplate look like?

 

 

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Customized stationery

Posted June 9, 2011 by
in Beautiful Creations, Cabinet of Curiosities, Editorial | Add your comment »

I don’t write a lot of letters, and when I do, my box of pale blue G. Lalo correspondence cards tends to serve the purpose. To thank people for all the thoughtful gifts they sent for our wedding, however, I opted for a fast and simple customization. We live in a part of Brooklyn that’s called Red Hook, and there are images of, well, red hooks all over the place in a shout-out to neighborhood pride. My drawing skills are limited, but an eBay search unearthed a handsome rubber stamp in the shape of a fishing hook. A trip to Paper + Presentation in Chelsea was all it took to procure some red ink and some more blank cards.

And voila! Customized stationery:

Of course, I didn’t have the idea until after we sent a lot of people postcards from Norway, but it’s fun to think of all the other ways I can put those cards to use.

Do you customize your stationery?

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