The Well-Appointed Desk

I’m an equal-opportunity office supply junkie. Pens? Yes, of course. Paper? Yep. Staplers, paper clips, clipboards? Don’t mind if I do. And the coup de gras of old office goodies, manual typewriters? Oo la la!

This weekend we went out to our favorite antique mall which is often a hot bed of vintage office supplies like old staplers, pocket notebooks with feed store logos and the occasional bullet pencil but typewriters tend to be of the dusty-and-rusty variety and never anything serviceable or useable. Until this weekend when I stumbled across a minty Olivetti-Underwood Lettera 22.

The mall was having a “meet the vendors” night with free cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and special discounts on merchandise so this fine piece of mid-century mechanics was 35% off. I grabbed this beauty and hopped to the register faster than you can say “shabby chic” and then we headed over to Skylab Letterpress to do some light cleaning and oiling.

It cleaned up beautifully and the keys work beautifully. I just need to order a new ribbon for it. It has a switch for two-color ribbon so I’ll keep that in mind when I order a new spool.

Sadly, the typewriter no longer had its carrying case so I’m keeping an old bit of fabric over the top of it to keep it from getting dusty until I find a case for it. Holler if you happen to find one!

Do you peruse thrift stores, antique markets or yard sales for vintage office supplies, pens or pencils?

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Desk Accessory du Jour: House Mugs and Coasters

AnaApril 22, 2014

Every desk needs a little something-something to make it special. Have you considered the coffee cup or mug you use? Is it something beautiful and appealing to you? What about protecting your work surface with a coaster instead of using an index card or scrap of paper?

Here’s where typographic legends House Industries might have what you need. They’ve just announced their beautiful type ornament-mandala leather coasters, currently available through Heath Ceramics in San Francisco but soon available on their web site.

In the meantime, you can cool your heels while keeping your coffee cozy in the House/Heath Hasami coffee mug ($35). Retro cool never kept your beverage so warm.

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A Knitter’s Notebook

AnaApril 22, 2014

All specialty skills have their own languages, knitting is no exception. In fact, it has its own codes to convey patterns and notes in a way that might baffle non-knitters. The new True Brit Knits knitter’s notebook provides a great place for knitters to track projects and pattern notes complete with standard pattern abbreviations and symbols on the inside front cover and a ruler in centimeters on the inside back cover, perfect for measuring your swatches. The kraft paper covers feature red, foil stamped knitting needles too.

It’s compact, A5 size is filled with 28 sheets (56 pages) of 100gms paper with clean white paper, alternating plain sides and 4:3 ratio graph paper printed in a pale blue. £10.00

(via My Life in Knitwear, shoutout to Laura at The Corner of Knit and Tea for the tip)

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Ask The Desk: Less Smudgy Pencils

AnaApril 21, 20141 Comment

Ask The Desk Header

Ian asked:

As a student, I frequently have to go back and reference older papers and essays (stored in binders) I have written. Though work in pen poses no problem, work in pencil, especially that older then a month, often becomes an unreadable gray smear due to pages sliding across each other. I use standard HB pencils (both mechanical and woodcase), but have often wondered if a harder grade would help mitigate this issue. Also, I have recently fallen in love with the FC 9000 pencils and am wondering how they are on the smudging issue, especially the HB grade ones.

I called in the pencil experts, the cast of the Erasable podcast to help get you the best answers. Here’s what the boys had to say:

Johnny from Pencil Revolution definitely supports your enthusiasm for the Castell 9000. He says its “definitely smear-resistant, even through some numbered B grades. On binder/office paper, I would not go softer than the B, though, which brings me to what I suspect the problem might be.

Office papers have so much tooth that they take ‘extra’ graphite from the pencil, and it doesn’t stay put, causing it to smear. Certainly some harder pencils will help. But I think a certain amount of smearing on looseleaf and printer paper is unavoidable. Plus, the loose nature of a binder causing more rubbing than a bound book.

Maybe a composition book, where the pages aren’t moving against one another so much, might help?”

Andy from Woodclinched suggested trying a Mars Lumograph in HB or a General’s testing pencil.

Tim from The Writing Arsenal concurred with both Johnny and Andy so there’s a lot of pencil authority there.

My final recommendations are, if you want to stick with loose leaf papers, is to try Hi-Polymer pencil leads, used in mechanical pencils. They tend to be less smudgy than standard woodcase pencil leads available from your local office supply store. Upgrading to the higher quality Faber-Castell 9000 or Hi-Uni pencils might also reduce smudging. You could also try some of Rhodia’s 3-hole punched paper which is not quite as toothy as standard loose leaf paper.

Best of luck and if you try any of this, let us know how it works for you.

In feature

April is National Letter Writing Month

AnaApril 20, 2014

(Original photo from Silvebluestar on Flickr)

While it might be a bit late in the month to bring this up, April is National Letter Writing Month. In 2001, the USPS released a statement to encourage letter writing by designating April as Letter Writing Month. We all already know and may have participated in February’s A Month of Letters or InCoWriMo but why not use April to reply to all those letters you got in February? That’s what I’m doing.

If you wrote to me in February, don’t be surprised if your reply arrives this month or in the early part of May. I’ve been spending each day writing at least one reply, usually over my lunch break in an effort to finally respond to the many cards, postcards and letters I received in February.

I did receive a few cards and letters without a return address. If you sent me a letter in February without a return address, I assume you were not anticipating a reply. If not, please send me an email using the Ask The Desk link at the top of the page and send me your mailing address so I can send you a proper reply.

There’s still more than a week left in April — plenty of time to dash off a few letters and cards.

Keep writing!

(for more info, check out the post over on the Letter Writers Alliance blog)

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Happy Ester(brook) Sunday!

AnaApril 20, 20147 Comments

esterbrook-sunday

Spring is the perfect time to pull out the Esterbrooks, dust them off and see which ones need a little spring cleaning. This is my whole Esterbrook collection and I can see a gaping absence of a brown or rootbeer model as well as a need for several more pastel pocket pens to fill out my collection. And I don’t have even one mechanical pencil.

Of the eight shown, five are in full working order with nibs installed. Two have my favorite stub nib, the Falcon Fine Stub 2442, the gray on the left has the legendary 9128 flex nib, the pastel pink has the 9788, the blue has the 9550.

Of course, while I had the pens out, I felt it necessary to do a little record keeping so I created a little spreadsheet inventory of the nibs I currently have and which pen they are residing in.

nib #	description	box?	in pen?
1550	Firm extra-fine, Bookkeeping	no
2284	Firm Stub, Signature Stub	yes
2442	Fine Stub, Falcon	yes	grey pearl
2442	Fine Stub, Falcon	no	red pearl
2556	Firm fine, Fine Writing	no
2556	Firm fine, Fine Writing	no
2668	Firm medium, General Writing	no
2668	Firm medium, General Writing	no
9128	Flexible Extra Fine, Fine penmanship (Pitman shorthand)	yes	grey pearl
9550	Firm Extra Fine, Bookkeeping	no	blue pearl
9555	Firm Fine, Shorthand	yes
9555	Firm Fine, Shorthand	no	pink pastel
9556	Firm Fine, Fine Writing, Records and charts	no
9668	Firm medium, General Writing	no

Clearly, I have more nibs than pens but not nearly all the possible nib options that are available:

(image via Rick Binder) — (image via Richard Binder)

I would really like to try the 9314F Master Point version of the Fine Stub, the 2048 or 9048 “Shaded Writing” and several others. Like jelly beans, with Esterbrooks, you can’t have just one!