Vintage Postcards for Creative Correspondence

One thing I've noticed lately on Tumblr is that a lot of youth are getting interested in "old-fashioned" correspondence. One user I follow regularly posts ads from girls aged 16-24 looking for pen pals. They're so anxious to reach out and connect, exploring postcards and hand-written letters as the vehicle.

I think this is marvelous and would do anything to encourage this. Obviously it's inappropriate for so many reasons for me to offer to write with them, but what can I do to foster this? If anything, I need to embody this practice by actually writing to the people I'm supposed to be writing to. I have excuses, but I would rather sit down and make time to cultivate these postal relationships.

But at least there is room to let people know where to go for resources. If you have someone to write to (or several someones, hopefully), you can pick up good pens at an art store, and maybe Barnes & Noble or Paper Source will have interesting letter sets. This is only a step up from the most rudimentary and basic form: using whatever pen/pencil you have lying around the house and filling up a couple pages of notebook paper. You can get as fancy or as minimalist as you like.

For people who are looking for something more interesting than a dozen souvenir postcards had from any gas station or gift shop, think about this: antique stores. If you're not too precious about marring a token of history, think about it as fulfilling an old postcard's Zen purpose. Seriously, many antique shops will have a selection of vintage cards somehow unused for the past several decades! Most of the time you'll find them neat and orderly, grouped by theme or geography, but today at Hunt & Gather (in my new neighborhood) I found, in the corner of the sprawling basement space, a disheveled bin of vintage postcards, marked down from what you can usually expect to pay for these things. It was a dream! If I didn't already have a small mountain of postcard books and vintage cards salvaged from cleaning out my wife's former childhood home, I would've just stuck two fists in and hauled my catch up, sight unseen, to the cash register.

So think about that. Find a nice pen, hit up the post office for interesting stamps, and haunt your local antique stores for amazing postcards. Every one loves receiving personal mail, and there are so many little ways to heighten the experience.

The Subtleties of Font

How many of you have ever practiced calligraphy? Many people think this means one specific style of writing, usually some form of italic or maybe even a German fraktur. In actuality, calligraphy is much more general than that: it's the discipline of very neat handwriting.

That handwriting can come in a variety of forms, which people call fonts, typefaces, or "hands" in casual conversation with other calligraphers. The accouterments that come with rigorous calligraphic execution are numerous and intimidating, and the thousands of hours of practice it requires may be off-putting. Yet at one time, penmanship was considered so essential for a civilized society, especially for anyone intending to do any kind of business, that the Palmer method of handwriting was mandatory in a young student's courseload.

Calligraphy really isn't as intimidating as all that. Once you reconcile yourself with the meditative discipline it requires--an increasing awareness of your own slight muscle movements, a calming focus in your mind--you may begin to understand and appreciate it as a world entirely of its own. And it's not difficult at all to practice, once you realize that handwriting actually comes up often in your life. Any time you're putting pen or pencil to paper, exploit that as a few more seconds for disciplined practice: addresses on bills, shopping lists, postcards, Post-It notes to coworkers, &c.

Image: The Atlantic

When I began teaching myself calligraphy (I had a miserable desk job with lots of downtime, so I started practicing drawing evenly spaced loops across a pad of paper), I tried to plunge into an "advanced" font, a very elaborate one that came much later down the timeline. But as I blundered through it, got control of it and then too familiar with it, my "hand" started slipping backward through time and I saw its predecessor fonts appearing on my page. This was a fascinating and magical process for me! Not only was I personally touched by the history of handwriting, I was able to begin to develop my own personal font--not one I'd use for writing checks, but something that would look nice on parchment and with certain acrylic inks.

Oh yes, you develop your own tastes for writing implements, inks, and papers as well.

Now it seems there's an iPad app, Typography Insight, designed to help people who work with fonts appreciate the subtle differences between fonts. I have no fear of technological culture, and I think an app like this only stands to reinforce this hobby of mine (if tidy handwriting is only a "hobby").

Typography Insight: iPad App Teaches Fonts Like Never Before

Letter Writers Alliance

Here's something I'm very excited about: dusting off my Cross and Retro 51 pens, filling them up with Noodler's and Mont Blanc, and sitting down to write on this lovely stationery from Letter Writers Alliance.

Last weekend I went to visit my favorite stationery store, Lunalux, because my friend and its manager, Jenni, was producing customized stationery to promote her new Stationery Saturdays event. For $29 I got six pocket notebooks with my wife's name printed on them (I kept one for myself but gifted her with the rest), having selected the cover and the paper within. Very nice stuff, and then I hung around for conversation.

Jenni asked me if I'd heard about the Letter Writers Alliance and I had not. I had just finished telling her about my standby, Postcrossing, and that's why she mentioned this group. Part DIY store, part pen pal group, and more than those, LWA is a branch of 16 Sparrows which has a broad range of interests in crafting, retro aesthetic, photography, just a lot of very creative stuff. Not the highest, cutting-edge creativity because that's too inaccessible: this place is a study of how people can bring creativity into their own lives, how they can compel it out of themselves. That's what makes it dear and sweet: it encourages everyone to do their best and assures them that it will be great.

But the LWA! I'm excited about this. I got my brown-paper-and-string package in the mail, broke into it to check out my stationery, immediately put my LWA pin on my label, filled out my membership card, logged onto the members-only area of their Web site, and dwelt in a geeked-out haze for a while. I'm trying to think of any other discrete event in recent past that has made my writing-hand itch so badly to begin reaching out to my friends. This afternoon I've written two notes on this paper and will write more. I'm going to write to the people who have been most important in supporting my need and custom for correspondence (e-mail inclusive), so I had to get a photo of this paper before I sent it all out.

Now I want to do more with Postalatry, dress this place up and try to appear a little more relevant just in case anyone from LWA happens to swing their eyes my way. I'm just thrilled to be part of this very nice-looking creative group, excited to be writing letters again (I never stopped writing postcards, but it's easier to do that when you do not expect anyone to write back, as per Postcrossing), and feeling more than a little validated in my interests. Some of my friends like to poke fun at the antiquity of some of my pastimes, the... I lost the word, I had a great word that specifically centered around the interest in things that are old, specifically for its oldness. And that's not me, but it's useful when representing the crap I take from people whose values lie with the latest technological breaking news.

So I'm glad to be part of the Letter Writers Alliance.

New Word: Suzuribako

Guess I can do a "word of the day" here, since I said I was going to and failed to do so. Today's word is: suzuribako. (Oh yes, I never said I'd stick to English words.)

A suzuribako is like a little stationery set from feudal Japan, precursor to the inkstand or desk set. It contains an ink-stick, a grinding stone (suzuri), several brushes and perhaps a container for water. The box is usually of lacquered wood, but this means it needn't always be, and in fact it seems I have a suzuribako at home. It's made of a flimsier cardboard body covered in fabric, which is more commonly found throughout stores that sell exotic merchandise in the States. It fulfills much of the function of a suzuribako but isn't as durable or, I suspect, respectable.

That is to say, it's good enough for me and my purposes, but I wouldn't show it off to honored guests. As of this writing I'm including a picture from the Vanderbilt gallery but tonight I'll replace that with a shot of my own suzuribako.

Why would I have one? Once upon a time, I fancied I'd attempt to learn Japanese brush painting, and then became immediately intimidated by all that it entailed. Then I figured I could at least learn to write kanji, and I did in fact practice for a whole week yet somehow failed to attain complete fluency in the Japanese language. I couldn't even remember any of the characters I practiced, so... I keep it around in my stationery chest and will probably take it out and practice it when I'm a little more earnest about learning Japanese (or, for that matter, any of the Chinese dialects).

Linocut: Tayto

This is the first linocut I've done in a long time. A bit of explanation is in order.

TAYTO is the mascot for an Irish potato chip company. Not so big in the States, but apparently everyone knows Tayto on the other side of the pond. My wife and I picked up some snacks while we were in Dublin and she was immediately taken with the cute little mascot. She saved a bag to later implement the image somehow, but I'm not sure what for.

Anyway, it turned out that we lost the bag, and as my wife was in a bad spot I thought I'd do something to cheer her up. I found a likely image of Tayto online, cleared out all the color, enlarged and reversed it, printed it out, and glued it to a block of linoleum. I traced the image out with a slim knife and began carving, and in two and a half hours I was finished. This is a very rough print, the ink was wet and globby and I didn't smooth out fullest contact with the paper, but the general idea is here. (I do need to find a smoother ink formula so the ink doesn't just build up on the edges like that.)

Originally Tayto said, "Be kind to Ireland," a plea for snackers to throw their chip bags in the trash rather than the streets or sidewalks of their fine nation. I drew in a large speech balloon so Tayto can say an incredible variety of things from now on.

Project Pendemonium: Success!

It was awesome! Pendemonium is at the southeastern-most corner of Iowa, so we woke up early Saturday morning... dawdled... and then took off. My navigator slept through our turn at Mason City so I didn't realize how off-course we were until Des Moines, but my own superior navigation skills charted a new course to Fort Madison and we showed up at the store at half an hour before close!

I had a great talk with the owner, chatting about pens and paper supplies. He illuminated me as to the Rhodia/Moleskine debate. The fact remains that I love Moleskine but I understand not every pen will take to it well, as its batches of paper are inconsistent. Rhodia has released a "web book" that emulates Moleskine's hardcover and elastic binder function, but I don't think it looks as nice. I have a deep emotional investment with Moleskine and I can't casually switch over to Rhodia even in light of this new information.

I picked up a Shakespeare-nib quill, a Pelikan refillable calligraphy pen, a Turkish woven bookmark (such as may be had up here, but now I can look at it and say I got it at Pendemonium), some homemade stationery-themed cards, and an antique inkwell. Fort Madison is such a flat, small, and empty town--most of its businesses were closed for the weekend, and those that weren't were still closing at 4:00 PM--and I wonder how a specialty store like Pendemonium can stay open. They do seem to enjoy substantial online business, which is great, but I wonder if they could appeal to the kids by providing pen pal URLs (not the least of which would be Postcrossing) and give some pleasant diversion to teenagers otherwise whiling away their time in an empty town.

That's what I would explore, if I were stuck there (and not old enough to hang out in Lost Duck Brewery).

Grandmother's Wooden Stamps

Last year I visited my grandfather in Idaho. One thing I always looked forward to in visiting my grandparents was rummaging through their books and creative supplies. I always had a set of favorite books I needed to find again and reread, and I also looked forward to finding new material that perhaps I wasn't hold enough to appreciate in years previous.

Last year's trip was no different, except I was about 30 years older. I found my old favorite children's books and reminisced over the feelings that these illustrations and stories made me feel. There was a giddy magical feeling to them, in that they only seemed to exist at my grandparents' house. I was not just separated from them by geography: even as a child I knew these books were representative of an entirely different generation from my own.

But this time I dug through the office supplies with intent to chronicle, and I was amazed at what I found. I'll post various of these pictures as we go along, but right now I'll only mention the cork stamps. I think they were cork, or else carved out of some other very soft, light wood. They were manufactured in India, according to their markings, and their surfaces were deeply dark and dyed from dozens of uses.

They were simple floral stylistic designs. I didn't know their exact purpose but I imagine they decorated the corners of pages of writing paper, in a letter to a friend, or the backs of envelopes. Really they could've been stamped anywhere, and a child would have stamped them anywhere, but if an adult had a set of these stamps, I tried to imagine when and why they would use them.

My History With Calligraphy

When I first began practicing calligraphy, I was in 5th grade. There was a special school day for the art classes in which instructors were brought in to lead us in various projects. I barely remember this day, but apparently I contributed to a large mural with some friends. What I do remember is a stout, middle-aged woman dressed in medieval peasant's garb teaching us calligraphy. We practiced it for one day, a certain blocky German Gothic font (I hadn't heard of Gothic; I thought "calligraphy" was the font) that I tried to replicate at home. Then I forgot all about it.

The second time I practiced calligraphy, I was in high school. I was looking for something interesting by which to distinguish myself. Bagpipes, accordion, and martial arts were my first choices, but the first two were completely outside of my realm and the third took too much work. As it happened I found my mom's Fred Eager book on italic calligraphy. It looked like the wrong calligraphy to me, since it wasn't Gothic with its sideways diamonds and extra decorative thin lines, so my mind expanded to allow that there were two types of calligraphy: one that looked like the script of ancient Bibles, and this more modern style that looked like the cover of a church newsletter. I thought I could only stand to benefit from neater handwriting, anyway, so I started to try it. It, too, was too hard and I abandoned it immediately.

Finally, well into my 30s, sitting at my desk for weeks on end at a thankless and soul-sucking corporate job, I decided to make some use of my time. I pulled out that Fred Eager book, dug out a beginner's calligraphic pen set (three nibs that fit into three fountain pens and a rainbow array of ink cartridges) that also came with its own calligraphy instruction guide--finally I realized that "calligraphy" was the discipline of handwriting and it could manifest in hundreds of different fonts and languages. And where ordinarily I would sit at that corporate desk day after day and stare at the grey fabric of the cubicle wall, now I was salvaging discarded paper notepads from the trash (honestly, these people would write on five pages and throw the entire pad away) and practicing writing evenly spaced "O" shapes, practicing letter angles for hours and hours.

As well, I practiced a few different, simple forms of calligraphy and wrote letters to my friends in these experimental fonts. Sometimes it was the pen that made all the difference, the nib dragging across the page that dictated which font I would use. The sample font (right) was one I designed myself but it is clearly borrowed from several varieties. In no way is it original, but it is the end result of practicing one font and, over the course of time, as my style relaxed, watching that font shape and morph into the related fonts that came before and after it in the continuum of handwriting. The size of the letters are sloppy but the style at least was consistent and I scanned in a page of a letter I was writing, that I might pick it up again and develop it with better discipline.

Some Tools of the Trade

These are some of the items I use in the course of my letter-writing and such. Yes, I really do use bottled ink, and yes, I really do use the rocking blotter, such as was typical desk accoutrement in Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons in the '60s.

This ink in particular is called Noodler's, and it's an excellent item. It comes in many vibrant colors, holds a rich hue, dries well, and is fairly resistant to environmental damage. When I know I'm going to use a fountain pen quite often, I'll go ahead and fill it up with this stuff. Otherwise, there's something about the richness of this ink that makes me think it shouldn't sit around in a pen cartridge for months, unused. It should be a fine dipping ink, too, but I've never used it for that.

The blotter is something I'd never need with Noodler's, but in the past I've used weaker, more insubstantial inks that take forever to dry. Sometimes that's the fault of the paper I'm using but mainly it's due to the chemical composition of the ink. Before I can fold that page up or set anything else on top of it, I've got to rock this blotter over my writing and sop up the extra juice. And I've learned it's no good to rapidly rock it back and forth over a sentence, unless I want to replicate ghost-prints of that sentence in the area surrounding the original print. One slow, firm tilt from side to side should be enough to dry up the page or remove enough excess that it can dry itself.

I took these pictures, and many others like them, for a Facebook game in which people could set up little stores with items of their own design. You could sell these items to people for in-game credits or you could gift them to lucky recipients. Needless to say, the stationery items in my store did not exactly move like hotcakes, not when other people were taking pictures of expensive cars, celebrities, and lingerie.