A Lost Art

Down to basics.

Cut the frills.

I’m a Plain Jane and not distraught over it. Don’t ask me about clothes, they don’t interest me much unless they come in solid black, white or beige, and can mix and match. Beyond natural fibers, fabrics also mean little to me. If a charmeuse hit me over the head with a georgette I’d only ask if it was washable. Given this penchant for simplicity in one form of textiles I’m at a loss to explain my complete enchantment with the texture, color and weight of paper and the flow, colors and hues of ink. There was a time I couldn’t pass a stationary store without stopping to buy a new pen, some linen bond and matching envelopes. The sheerness of rice papers, the scented beribboned boxes of note cards kept me lolling in the aisles while shop clerks, refusing to believe I didn’t need help, interrupted my blissful contemplation.

Of course the quaint and dusty stationary shops have been replaced by brightly-lit box stores selling the electronic age contraptions and sundries that are replacing ink and paper. With persistence, one may still find an occasional fine linen bond with a proper rag content. Ink pens abound in extraordinary styles these days. Still, finding a pen that balances perfectly in the hand while releasing ink to paper smoothly and with perfect flow is perplexing when one must decide between purple paisley with clear plastic cap and faux red burl wood with brass pocket clip. Of course a fine pen is available for a price and that price is usually well beyond my financial sensibility. I’ve managed to hold onto a favorite pen given to me some forty years ago. The gold plating has rubbed off in places but it still feels like a fine tool and good quality ink refills are still available. Paper is rather more consumable and must be tracked down at regular intervals.

The craft of paper-making was revived a few years ago but the often nubby, soft thick papers felt and looked more like corn and flour tortillas than paper and although pretty, were more suitable for framing than for writing upon. Writing paper, fine quality parchment and bond with the correct weight and smoothness, is a lost treasure and with it went the long flowing lines of India ink and the flowery and complex language of a thoughtfully written letter.

Thomas Jefferson's autobiography sits on my bookcase. I open it often. In it I can become lost in his fine letters to persons of political note as well as of those to his wife and children. I fall in love with the man, with the pen, with the paper, with the words, with the fluidity of thoughts and the perfection and completeness of the whole. This is what is lost. This is what we may never recover. The art of the letter.