For one decade—now a couple decades ago—I lived in New York City. Overly (actually, frantically) anxious to fit in, I studied the natives and found three basic requisites for survival: great haircut, fashionable shoes and handbag, and serious stationery. In a city where perception is everyone's reality, that trifecta seemed to somehow kick open doors and knighted the person with a credibility unavailable elsewhere.
So, I was not terribly surprised when I opened today's New York Times and found in the Home section an article on stationery collections (titled "The Lettered Set"). The opening shot is of a beautiful secretary (the wood, not the flesh and bone, kind) reworked to house rows of boxes, each with a small tag identifying the paper inside. The die-makers range from the now defunct Mrs. John L. Strong (who used to sell to the Duchess of Windsor) to the New York stalwart (Dempsey & Carroll), as well as from Kate's Paperie and Crane.
I understand this. I may be on the computer all the time and I may use email far, far more than a stamp on an envelope but I still have my stash of stationery, from the engraved sets I ordered from Tiffany's in the 1980s
to my most recent Cheree Berry creation
and the cache of colorful Paper Petals papers created by the local and extremely talented Nancy Thias.
I love heavy-weight, simple, elegant paper. I love getting notes from my friends and seeing which piece they selected to send. But, I'll confess, I am truly terrible about using them. I'll be great for say, a month (and that month is usually January, right after Christmas) and I will dutifully pulled out my boxed notes and pick from each to write thank yous to friends. (My family has not (I am embarrassed to say) seen one of these in years.) But the other months? I think about it. I think about it frequently. And then days, weeks, months pass and welp, it doesn't get done.
But who knows? Years from now, some of you may be receiving a note from me penned on one of these—dusted off and slipped into the mail.
That is assuming there is such an antiquity as snail mail.
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