A blank-book for thoughts
Having had several detailed discussions with my brother on what constitutes acceptable paper for note-books or letters, I felt sympathy...
Manuscripts as moments in time
I have long felt this sense of time’s encapsulation in manuscripts, and I like this example of a manuscript being...
Schoolboy sketches
Maurice Cramer was a Geneva schoolboy who joined his classmates in August 1870 for a school trip to discover Champéry. ...
My kind of letter
Love receiving 'real' letters, and so was thrilled to find this beautiful envelope in the letter box, apparently made from...
Pencil and paper
Steinbeck wrote with pencil on the ubiquitous American yellow pad. Computers and word-processing came too late for him, and so...
Stitched with stolen silk
This hand-bound, home-made note book contains the manuscript of Orlando's great poem, 'The Oak Tree', begun in 1586. He takes...
Inkhorn in one hand, pen in the other
Orlando enjoys a portfolio career, as a courtier, a diplomat, a landowner, a lady under house arrest, but throughout, he-she...
Steady as she goes
When I created a category dedicated to the accoutrements of writing and drawing, I had in mind pens and their...
A packet of air mail envelopes
You may not have noticed, but air mail envelopes and the corresponding lightweight letter paper are dying out. I am...
A quick frozen harvest of memory
I liked this lively description of the importance of notebooks. How many do we have dotted around our homes, half...
The pleasure of paper post
One of the greatest pleasures of Christmas, for me anyhow, is the sending and receiving of cards, one of the...
A paean to paper
When developing this website, I created the Paper Shaper category to celebrate this wondrous material. This lengthy praise of paper...
© Beatrice Otto 2021 - design & content unless otherwise stated - all rights reserved