The Emperor’s New Clothes
As per tradition. First - a customer service announcement. Clare is taking richly-deserved time off. The UK office was closed from 3-7 August and will be again from 24-28 August. No orders will be despatched during these weeks. By all means order away, and everything will go out on the Monday following. I (Stu) will be monitoring email and social from the mountain hideaway - so any problems, yell.
TJ Cosgrove and I co-host a podcast, 1857. Associated with it is a Slack, where a diverse group of listeners hang out. (If you want to join - drop me a mail. I’ll send you an invite.) There’s always lots of chat, and stationery figures heavily in the conversation. Every now and then, somebody makes a comment that makes me roar with laughter…
“I know it’s been mentioned on here before, but Makers Cabinet have invented something called ‘A Ruler’. I’ll bet someone called Baron Fig will invent the notebook next…”
Whip-like wit.
There is no malice in the comment, it’s an observation on the amount of consumer-marketing that surrounds much of the “new” products that come to market.
Makers Cabinet gave us the Høvel, and the Iris, and have now launched the Stria Ruler. All beautifully conceived, designed and built takes on pretty innocuous items. I backed all of them.
Baron Fig notebooks are, well, notebooks. Although the Vanguard is “designed for greatness”, apparently. Their pen, the Squire is…(brace yourselves) “a mighty sword. It’s a weapon of mass construction. It grants the power to move entire nations, to touch people’s hearts and souls - to make something from nothing.” I have a veritable armoury of Squires, and a drawer full of Vanguards and Confidants.
The last Field Notes Edition were “bad-ass little companions”. They are, too.
“As we move through our lives, our notebooks come with us, travelling in our pockets and our bag, stored on our desks and our shelves, becoming an extension of our personality and identity.” That’s Moleskine, that one. I need to be physically restrained from entering a Moleskine store for the sake of my fiscal health.
From time to time, it’s worth reminding ourselves not to take stationery too seriously. To laugh at our fascination.
So, instead of buying something today, pull open THAT drawer, and crack open something that you bought before.
