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LUXURIOUS WRITING PAPER
ONE OF THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE
By Sara Schmidt
A new appreciation for what once was considered proper etiquette - the hand-written note - has letter writers the world over discovering the luxury writing material market, affording them a taste of the good life in a time of tightened budgets.
You may be one of those who prefer the no-fuss ease of e-mailing. Press a button on your computer keyboard. Open. Read. Delete, answer or save. Or perhaps, you yearn for a little romance, a taste of the finer things in life, even if it's just in your personal correspondence.
Luxury notepaper is not the kind you write your grocery list on, nor tear a corner from to use as a bookmark. Stationery connoisseurs know the most expensive type of paper is copper-engraved or die-stamped, with lovely raised lettering to run your fingers over. Thermography achieves much the same effect at a lesser cost. And laid paper, manufactured with a ribbed texture, is also quite costly and still preferred by artists.
Of course, such lovely notepaper deserves no less than tissue-lined envelopes by Smythson of Bond Street or The Wren Press, which has royal warrants from both the Queen and the Prince of Wales. But don't worry. If you are befuddled by the whole luxury stationery market, Crane & Co. manufactures high-end stationery products as well as offering guidance for both social and professional correspondence in "Crane's Blue Book of Stationery: The Styles and Etiquette of Letters, Notes, and Invitations."
In any doubt as to how much your choice of writing paper reveals about you? Consider the words of the most revered voice in etiquette, Emily Post, in 1922:
"The letter you write, whether you realize it or not, is always a mirror which reflects your appearance, taste and character. A "sloppy" letter with the writing all pouring into one corner of the page, badly worded, badly spelled, and with unmatched paper and envelope - even possibly a blot - proclaims the sort of person who would have unkempt hair, unclean linen and broken shoe laces."
Once, letter writing was an art. Words were carefully chosen and penmanship lessons were evident in elegant cursive flourishes recorded on the finest of paper. Victorian women might have illustrated or painted their letters, or even painstakingly addressed the envelopes with intricate pin pricks.
Interestingly enough, what we call stationery was once sold by a stationer, a book shop at a fixed (stationary) location, usually near a university. Other medieval trade was not stationary, but plied by peddlers on foot or sold at seasonal markets or fairs.
Paper originated some 5,000 years ago in Egypt, with marsh grass (papyrus) soaked in the Nile, layered to form a mat and pounded thin and dried. It was lightweight and portable, used for record-keeping and works of art. The process was further refined in China in 105 A.D. Individual intertwined fibers soaked in water were lifted onto the surface of screens and dried to become thin layered material close to what we now know as paper.
Throughout history, an increasing demand for paper led to the use of unusual materials: recycled cotton and linen, wasp nests, cabbage and straw and even recycled Egyptian mummies.
Thai artisans today craft handmade paper - popular internationally - from the mulberry tree ("sa.") Using centuries-old techniques and designs they incorporate flower petals, color dyes, bougainvillea petals and tamarind seeds.
But whether you use expensive imported paper or an inexpensive drug store brand, or even if you only correspond online, remember what Emily Post concluded about the fine art of letter-writing:
"The difference though, between letter-writers of the past and of the present, is that in other days they all tried to write, and to express themselves the very best they knew how - today (sic) people don't care a bit whether they write well or ill."