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World Stationery Day
Did you know today, April 24, 2024 was World Stationery Day?
Well if you missed it, National Stationery Week is coming up in May 15 to 21.
There is no better time than now to snatch up some MLT Notebooks, Pens, Signed Studio Scribble Art Prints, and the most beautiful music in the world!
nationaltoday.com
Ready to celebrate World Stationery Day? Pull out your notebook and make some notes as we walk you through the history of stationery.
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34 Replies
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In honour of World Stationery Week coming up!
This is pretty beautiful.
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I still vividly remember walking to my 1st grade school (on Yokota Air Force Base in Japan) and looking gleefully at the pens and pencils in it. This would have been in 1957 and the schools still used fountain pens to teach cursive skills. I believe one on the fountain pens was an Esterbrook ! It was a lever puller on the body of the pen so that pulling it up the rubber tube reservoir would be compressed by the part of the lever in the pen which upon dipping in an ink bottle and releasing the lever sucked ink into the tube. I still enjoy writing with fountain pens and have some really fine writing paper from Crane Stationery that weighs enough that even a broad nib won’t bleed through.
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This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by Dave Johnston.
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This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by
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Hi Dave
Yeah those vintage lever filler fountain pens were quite beautifully made back then. They are all collectible now if you can find one in good shape. I acquired a 1917 Waterman 52 level filler fountain pen that wrote like a dream. It had a new rubber sac and all. I filled it with some beautiful red ink one day, and after a few weeks it melted the sac. I learned red ink dyes wreak havoc on latex rubber sacs! Big lesson learned in the fountain pen hobby. I really love the precise, tactile feel and sound of writing with a fountain pen, like a Samurai sword on paper, leaving a wet crisp line. I just find it so appealing. By the time I was in elementary school, the ball point pens took over. My best friend at the time in grade 5 was into fountain pens, and always used one in class. I remember the teacher discouraging him from using the fountain pen because of the potential of ink leaking everywhere. He was defiant and continued using it in class. I noticed occasionally he had inky fingers, but never had an ink disaster. I bought one out of curiosity, it was a Sheaffer No Nonsense I think using little cartridges. I used it for a while until I ran out of ink and couldn’t afford to buy anymore cartridges. I was more into sling shots and chocolate bars back then and my little allowance went into other things. I remember you could buy quite a bit with just a quarter in those days. Never knew back then, the fountain pen would return in a big way later in life. 🙂
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And from some other famous musicians who appreciate fine stationery.
You can walk, you can talk, you can fight
But inside you’ve got something to write
In your hand you hold your only friend
Never spend your guitar or your pen
Your guitar or your pen
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A Tangerine Dream
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I hope you’re getting a commission. LOL.
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Hi Jung,
I didn’t know that. But what I still remember exactly is how, as a child, I visited various stationery stores with my parents shortly before the start of the new school year to buy exercise books, fountain pens, colored pencils and coloring pads. And what great things could you do with it. After class, I made paper airplanes with my friends and let them fly around the schoolyard. Many a page of a school notebook was then folded until it turned into a great airplane. This was much more fun than scribbling endless numbers or letters on the pages of paper. Paper boats and paper hats were also very popular.
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With some paper, a pen, a glue stick, a pair of scissors and of course a lot of imagination you can make so many great things (you can find all of this in the stationery store). How about this?
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Hi Jurgen
A couple of great videos, thanks! The first Japanese one is beautiful, and the Beatles video is amazing, all animated with cutout paper figures. It must have taken forever to create, such imagination and talent.
I remember at the end of summer there was “Back To School” shopping days. The school sent out school supply lists for the parents to get the kids stationery for the school years. We would go to the local stationery store and get all the wonderful new pencils, pens, scissors, paste & glue and tape, exercise books, staplers, erasers, pen cases, compass, rulers, crayons, and colourful felt pen sets (my fave) with all the colours of the rainbow….I always looked forward to going shopping with my parents to get my new stationery haul for the year. Nowadays all the pen shops in the city know me by name whenever I show up, even after a number of years! 😎🖋
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Oh yes Jung, the school shopping list. Most of the time these were notebooks, felt-tip pens, wax crayons, drawing pads and watercolors for painting lessons We received most of the schoolbooks on the first day of school. It was kind of exciting to see what new things we would learn (except for the math books, which I found rather scary at a certain point 😄 ). Compared to today’s school books, it was kind of antiquated and boring stuff. Unfortunately, stationery stores have become rare. They still exist, but you have to look for them. In the 90s, a Stationery discounter became widespread. Writing supplies and office supplies on a very large scale. These discounter stores disappeared a few years ago. Probably displaced by online trading. Kind of a shame. I always loved looking at all the pencils, fountain pens, pads and drawing materials. That kind of sparked creative ideas.
PS: My first ink fountain pen must have looked something like the photo below. And the ink cartridges sometimes were leaking. Blue school bag, blue exercise books and blue fingers. Maybe the idea for The Blue Man Group came about at that time.That was always a huge mess. And then there was also these pencil case. I don’t even know if kids have anything like that these days.
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Jung, I’m glad to hear you had a much better attitude about back-to-school shopping than these kids did:
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David, I certainly had the back to school blues at the end of the summer, but fortunately it was offset by all the shiny new stationery that excited me. I always remember the BIC Crystal, and the packs of BICs my parents bought us. Later I gravitated towards pens with replaceable ballpoint cartridges. Here is an interesting video about the BIC Crystal. Fountain pen’s are more environmentally friendly though, without filling up our landfills with millions of plastic throw away pens every day.
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Jung, that video was much more fascinating than I expected! And I somehow managed to make it this far in life without realizing that a “ball point” pen involves a physical ball.
I still use those basic Bic pens, and carry a couple in my pocket at all times. However, nowadays I pretty much only use them for writing checks, so they last me so long that I usually either lose them or they break in my pocket long before the ink runs out.
Hey, remember when they came out with erasable ink around 1980? My high school English teachers required us to write our essays in ink, and I always dreaded having to scribble things out, so I thought my problems were solved. Of course, the ink didn’t really erase, as much as turn into a big blue smudge.
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Got any Quo? Yes, of course!:
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An imaginative video and a beautiful paper cut animation:
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Remember this psychadelic rock hit of the sixties? It only made the lower reaches of the US charts, but reached the top ten in both the UK and Canada:
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Thanks Paul, I haven’t heard or seen these bands before. Quo does some great guitar work in their song.
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Jung, Quo had numerous hits in the UK between 1966 and 2010. In fact their first UK hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men” also reached no. 12 in the US charts, but it was their only US Top 50 hit.
It was always joked that they only knew 3 chords, but they’ve certainly made a good living out of it!!
Sadly one of their two longstanding members, Rick Parfitt passed away in 2016, so I suspect that they’ve had their last hit, even though they’re still making music.
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I never even heard of “Stationary Day”. Although I did work with some that observed it all the time. Had very little to do with writing though…🤣
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Hi Jung…. Sadly, I no longer have my beloved purple fountain LAMY?! ( I think that’s what it was ), anymore, I miss it, and have no idea when I can afford to get a replacement as I have other things I need to be able to afford to to replace that are more important when I can do so , but I did enjoy having/using it and the purple ink when I had it … I still enjoy drawing using Drawing Apps, using colored pencils/Crayola type markers, etc doing real drawing but it’s harder with my arthritic fingers/hands, eye issues, so the Drawing Apps are much my go to nowadays for my drawing endeavors, ….. I was not aware of ” World Stationary Day ” , though I do think the art /importance of actual penmanship /old school writing letters, etc should be made mandatory once again in schools and be taught at home, in communities, etc to generations who never have experienced it ( primarily those in age brackets under 40 -lol ) … I think it needs to be compulsory/imperative/mandatory to know how to write actually and not solely rely on digitalization means, that is …knowing how to manage to write/cook/do laundry, the basics in the event of power failure, etc to adjust/adapt/survive… like how our generation, generations before us, did ,before internet arrived, took over… it’s mind boggling to me, just how many out there do not know the basics of writing, , cooking, etc. I’m not sure why , kind of sad, I believe one should know the bare minimum basics to survive on being in a internet free situation…. acquiring to having these skills …. to me it’s practical and common sensed to learn/know basics in order to have that knowledge to function best one can if needed to and to simply know how ….
This is my own personal opinion and one can respectfully agree/not, as each are equal to expressing their own thoughts/opinions … 🤘
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This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by Jacki Hopper.
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Hi Jacki
Sorry to hear you no longer have your purple Lamy Safari and purple ink. I hope you can re-acquire one again one day, or at least continue creating your visual artwork with a good app that works for you.
You make a good point, it is a sorry state of affairs that schools are slowly doing away with teaching kids proper handwriting skills. Indeed when the power goes out, or you are in the wild and need to leave a note for emergency to communicate and your electronic devices are out of power and no longer working, what are you going to do if you don’t have the skills to handwrite intelligibly. Even now in business, every important contract requires a signature, though we do use apps like “Docusign”, but even that is based on your unique signature.
I think as safe/permanent people think digital is, there are risks. For example I have hours and hours of video footage I converted to digital saved on portable drives thinking they are forever protected. Well one day I went to watch one of those files, and low and behold, the latest windows video viewer says “codec not supported” WHAT!!!!!!. I had to scramble to find the proper codecs. Luckily I had also uploaded many of the most precious clips to Youtube that I could still watch. Digital, when the codec or format is no longer supported is useless!!!!! Can you imagine the original “Declaration of Independence” being accidentally erased. Fortunately I still have all those 8 mm video tapes and video player I can re-create files from, but I think analog, including ink and paper will have a place for a long time, including vinyl LPs. My parents old vinyl record collections from decades ago which is a treasure trove are still good and can be played, glad they weren’t saved as unsupported MP3 type files and the vinyl’s discarded.
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A lot of good points there, Jung. I’ve heard futurists say that archaeologists hundreds of years from now won’t easily be able to interpret our era because most of our information will be stored in forms they can’t decipher. And even within our own time, web pages are constantly being revised so that it’s nearly impossible to trace the evolution of ideas.
I just discovered a stand-up comedian a couple of days ago who makes some pithy observations concerning young people and their lack of written communication skills:
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Hi David,
Great video clip, that is so true as things change so rapidly, things we took for granted like writing checks even are foreign to the new generations. My new company I work at for example has gone completely paperless, no printers in the office, and in fact company resources are not allowed to print any documents, and we’re not even allowed to connect USB drives to company property laptops. Contracts are all done using Docu-Sign, no paper contracts. Everything is electronic PDFs and files. Will be a time very soon where printers, faxes, copiers will be foreign.
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This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by
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A blank sheet of paper is like a freshly plowed field in the spring. It is a fertile breeding ground for thoughts and ideas. A playground for the imagination. But it is only the hand that picks up a pen, that turns a simple sheet of paper into poetry: it allows thoughts to conquer the highest mountain peaks, to cross any desert, however inhospitable it may be, to overcome any wall and to connect worlds separated by oceans. It is the hand and the loving thought that unite two hearts that are far apart, for a brief moment. For a brief blink of infinity, only by the magic of ink and pen.
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Hey Jurgen, that is beautiful! Thoughts and ideas, our words can sometimes paint a more beautiful and elegant place than the physical world. Perhaps it is those things that make the world a better place, and what separates us humans from the animal kingdom. Our imagination and ideals expressed on paper and into song and poetry. I like the lyrics in the Who song, Guitar and Pen, I posted above, “you can talk, you can walk, you can fight, but inside you’ve got something to write, In your hand you hold your only friend”. You can leave mark in this world. They say sometime when you write something down, you are actualizing it in the world, and there is a benefit to that. This George Harrison song video of While My Guitar Gently Weeps is beautiful.
This Sunday April 28 is “National Great Poetry Reading Day“. A day to celebrate distinguished poetry and notable poets who wrote them down.
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Jung, I was obsessed with that “national day calendar” a few years ago. Each day recognizes several things, almost always including a type of food. Every morning I would greet my students with “Happy National (today’s honored food) Day!” My favorite was November 12th: National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day.
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Hi David
That is a cool website/calendar. It goes to show every day is really special, sometimes it’s so easy for the days to go by like like a blur, if you let it. It’s good to stop and appreciate what each day has to offer, it’s all about living in the moment I guess.
National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day, I like that! 👍😁 Will mark that day down for some extra slices, though I do like anchovies on my pizza. At my old work place downtown there was this cheap Pizza by the slice place that was my favourite lunch hangout for a while.
“Happy National Gummi Bear Day”
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Thank you, Jung. And happy National Devil Dog Day to you!
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This one made no. 17 in the 2009 UK singles charts:
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Here’s a different item of stationery for you:
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I heard this song on the radio once when I was a kid. Later I tried to remember the hook line, but the best I could come up with was “Try not to hurt yourself with a rubber band, man.” I’ve since come to see this as the perfect sarcastic departure line as you end a conversation with a klutz, should the need ever arise.
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Nice one, David!
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Good one Paul! What a blast from the past, I remember that song was a big hit playing on the airwaves back in the day. I found the song quite catchy at the time. It made me chuckle a bit when they pulled out the giant rubber band towards the end of the performance and started to dance with it. A great fun to watch performance, we certainly don’t see groups like this anymore.
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Yes, I found that amusing too, Jung!
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