Stationary Stores

[Maurizio]

I have always loved the smell of paper and the smell of fresh paper from a bookstore. When I was a child my darling Aunt, a teacher, used to take me to the Dennisons stationary store in mid-town Manhattan. This was always the highlight of my visits with her from our home in the deep burbs of upstate Hudson Valley NY. The company still exists as the Avery/Dennison you all know as the makers of all sorts of labels, but no more stationary stores. As a kid the Dennison store was a magical place full of all sorts of paper goods, cool school supplies, notebooks, stickers, and notepaper and envelopes of every kind.

 

What comes close is the Kinokuniya store in Manhattan. A very delightful place for the stationary obsessed.

 

Its sad that more such stores dont survive. In NYC the iconic Art Brown Penshop closed about 5 years ago. This too was a magical place which carried all sorts of stationary supplies, Cranes paper, Rhodia and Clarefontaine, Quo Vadis and other diaries and sketchbooks, Filiofax products, and calligraphy supplies.

 

There are many strictly paper selling stationary stores in NYC, but none which combine the delights of a full service fountain pen shop along with stationary the way Art Brown did. Kinokuniya comes close, but their prices on fountain pens are too hgh; lots of nice notebooks and other fun stuff though and Japanese fountain pens if your wallet can take it. The only brick and mortar pen store in NYC still standing is the Fountain Pen Hospital. Great store but they dont have anything close to the variety of stationary on offer that Art Brown used to carry.

 

If youre lucky enough to have such a store near you, patronize it. It does seem that millennials so-called are interested in the personal and tactile joys of handwritten notes and fountain pens, witness the success of online sellers such as JetPens. Maybe we should start a GoFundMe page for each big City in the US which doesnt have a beautiful stationary store to subsidize its establishment; the denizens of each such City can decide if they want to help such a store at least get off the ground or maybe we can start a co-op movement the way enthusiasts for natural foods started food co-ops in college towns and other hipster sections of towns and cities. Time to give Amazon some competition.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Maurizio

[Maurizio]

I guess I should count myself blessed that there are still stores like that here in Kuala Lumpur.

 

One of my favorites is a shop called Czip Lee, which carries a wide range of pens, paper, ink, office supplies, art supplies, school supplies, and so on. It's nice to have a shop where schoolchildren buying exercise books, office workers coming in to grab some extra printer cartridges and box folders, artists restocking their supplies of paper, brushes, and paints, and fountain pen obsessives checking out pens and bottled inks all mingle around in the same space.

 

That store has a very well-stocked fountain pen section, which would be the best in KL if not for the existence of PenGallery (a more upscale FP-focused store in a different part of town, not a general stationery store). On the other hand, Czip Lee has by far the best selection of dip nibs and holders I have ever seen in a brick and mortar store. I can't think of another shop where one can find multiple different types of oblique holders in one place, and be able to compare them in person before purchasing. Simply splendid.

 

That said, my absolute favorite part of that shop is the top floor - the paper supplies section, which feels like Borges's library of all possible books, except with paper instead of books. That floor has an old-world-forgotten-library atmosphere to it, what with the Byzantine variety of papers stacked in wooden cabinets and piled up in rolls and sheaves in every corner. It's a fun place to get lost in for a couple dozen minutes.

 

Fortunately, most stationery stores here in KL seem to be doing well. I hope it stays that way.

This place sounds as near to heaven on earth as I can imagine. Wish we had something like that in NYC.

[Maurizio]

Could that have been Avery? Now days they just make sticky labels for sale elsewhere but I've heard they used to be big stores in their own right.

Yes you’ve got it. See my other post here.

[dogpoet]

If you're having problems finding nice stationary, art supplies shops can be well worth a look: most of the ones I've seen also sell fountain pens and stationary as well.

[Maurizio]

Could that have been Avery? Now days they just make sticky labels for sale elsewhere but I've heard they used to be big stores in their own right.

Yes you’ve got it. See my other post here.

[Conan the Grammarian]

Interesting bit of trivia (at least, to me), the reason stores selling paper and ink are called stationery (with an e) stores is that the purveyor of such products was, at one time, known as a stationer, hence his wares being known as stationery (with an e).

[Maurizio]

Busted!

 

Thanks for the correction officer.