Why beautiful stationery matters
Yes, I would say that, and yes, there are far more important, heart-breaking things happening in the world. But bear with me.
Beautiful stationery matters because beautiful, well-made, everyday objects matter.
Having your morning coffee in your favourite cup, the one that’s just the right weight, fits perfectly in your hand and feels reassuringly familiar, makes a real difference to how you start your day, and quite possibly to every interaction you go on to have.
But let’s zoom out a little. Think about that cup. Who made it? How did they decide its shape, its colour? Did someone draw that pattern in a sketchbook, iteration after iteration? Did they feel the clay in between their hands? Did the glaze turn out the way they expected? (I’m not a potter, so my apologies if this is nonsensical).
Zoom out a little more. Think about how long people have been making cups, or other vessels. Think about the centuries, millennia, of shaping, crafting and using objects very much like the one in your hands. There is something fundamentally human about a cup – about the things that surround us, that we use every day without thinking.
Let’s zoom back in. What’s the story of this cup in your own life? It might be mundane. It might be a long-ago purchase you don’t remember. But how about the layers of day after day of picking it up, filling it with steaming coffee, and drinking from it? How many versions of you has it witnessed? How many emotions? How have the hands holding it changed in that time? There may be more stories. You might remember exactly how you chose it, the artisan who made it, or the friend who gave it to you. You may have inherited it. Perhaps lost it and found it again. Maybe the handle broke and you can trace the jagged line where you glued it back on.
This cup is every cup, that simple, very human object. It’s also, very precisely, your cup.
Stationery matters in exactly the same way. Whether you pick up the same, simple notebook from a stationery shop every time the previous one is full, have a preference for utilitarian lines or luxuriously thick, pristine pages, or relish choosing a beautiful, handmade, one-of-a-kind tome, the perfect stationery is full of stories.
A notebook is the heir to a whole history of writing and bookbinding. It is also very specifically this notebook, designed by someone, materials made and chosen, folded and cut and sewn or stapled or glued, whether by machine of by hand: it, too, is a fundamentally human object, with layers of stories embedded in it before it is even made, added to at every stage – not least the one that gets told when it gets to you and you pick up a pen.
