• Recent Posts

  • Spiralling away
  • The pen is poised
  • Ingenious invention
  • Script, up close
  • Cupcake notepad

• Categories

  • Cards
  • Erasers
  • Folders & binders
  • Historical Writing Implements
  • Historical writing instruments
  • I want one!
  • Letters
  • Notebooks
    • mini-pads
    • moleskines
    • Spiral pads
  • Paperclips
  • Pencils
  • Pens
    • Ball pens
    • Fountain Pens
    • Gel pens
    • Quills
  • Random stationery
    • index cards
    • notepaper
    • paper
    • sticky notes
  • Stationery Lover's Life
    • Book reviews
  • Writing

• Archives

  • March 2009
  • October 2008
  • September 2008

(Image by Loretín)

From pale to intense, from loneliness to a press of crowd. I just thought this would make an interesting contrast with yesterday’s arty photo.

(Image by thomaseagle)

Taking great pictures like this one should be easy, but it isn’t. I couldn’t do it. I’d love to go and photograph my vast collection of pens, pads, pencils, cases and folders, and make them look this tasteful and romantic…

(Image by Brymo)

Some people’s imagination is going to give me nightmares. Do sticky notes actually go out to hunt when nobody’s looking?

As promised, I’m starting a series of articles about writing instruments through history. Today you learn to use the writing toys of a Sumerian scribe.

Here’s what you do.

1. Grab some clay. It’s marshy over here in Sumer, so there’s plenty of mud underfoot. It’s dirt cheap - literally - and thus it makes excellent material to write upon. (In the modern world, you may have to get some pottery clay.)

2. Shape the clay into a flat cushion-like lump, like so:

(Image by listentoreason)

3. Pick a stylus: it’s a wedge-shaped reed when you’re in Sumer, or a sliver of wood for a contemporary scribe.

(Image from Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts)

4. While the clay is still soft, hold the tablet in your left hand - or put it down flat if it’s a large tablet - and start pressing the end of the stylus into it.

NB: You will soon notice that soft clay prevents you from drawing curves. The earliest writing was pictorial, but for speed and efficiency it soon degenerated into wedges and straight lines. So your curves become angles formed by a junction of two lines. This angular writing is called cuneiform, from the Latin “cuneus” - wedge.

5. When you’re finished, you may want to let your tablet dry in the sun, but sun-dried clay is quite crumbly. You may want to bake your tablet in a kiln.

Baked clay tablets like these were pretty durable, and many of them were discovered in good condition. Some tablets found in Sumerian schools have the teachers’ writing on one side and the pupils’ efforts on the other, to show us how one learned to write in cuneiform.

Once this writing evolved, it was possible to use it in other languages: it was the method used by Babylonians, Assyrians, and latter the Hittites and Persians.

(Image from Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts)

The next article will take us to Egypt, where we can play with some reeds. If you enjoyed our Sumerian adventure, consider subscibing to my RSS feed for automatic updates.

————————–
Sources and further reading:

1. Story of Handwriting by Alfred Faibank
2. Light From the Ancient Past by Jack Finegan
3. Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and customs by A.H. Sayce
4. Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts by Georges Jean

(Image by james_jhs)

Theoretically, there’s hardly ever much need to buy paperclips. I clip things temporarily, and then either staple them, or punch holes through them, or recycle them. But paperclips disappear on a regular basis, which means that - oh, dear - I have to go stationery shopping again.

Terrible hardship, that.

Do you go through a lot of paperclips? How often do you need to restock your clip drawer?

Fine stationery and gold-tipped Monblancs are all very well, but sometimes, a dose of simple cuteness works just as well to satisfy a notepad craving:

(Image by glindsay65)

(Image by Lady Orlando)

These pretty toys belong to an artist, and therefore I can’t say much about them. (Can’t pain or draw or anything, see.) All I can tell is that I like how they’re all sitting together, waiting to be told what to do.

However, the author of this photo has commented it very helpfully on Flickr, so if you’re curious what’s what, you can follow the link through the photo, and find out first hand.

(Don’t forget to come back to me, though, and tell me what you think.)

(Image by imagesbykim)

This delicately patterned paper would work great in a scrapbook. I think. I don’t have a scrapbook, although I often think I’d enjoy making one.

I suppose, you could also use it as background texture in web-design, but to me the picture says “Hello, I’m beautiful paper. You want to touch me.”

(Image by Caro Wallis)

When I posted a few days ago about a gold-nibbed Montblanc pen, I started wondering who and why had first decided that gold would be a good material for making pens.

I spent a few hours reading about history of writing implements, and soon it didn’t matter any more why I’d dived into this little research project in the first place.* I’ve found out some things I’d never given much thought to, but which make perfect sense.

For example, people throughout history used the writing materials which were convenient for their habitat: the Egyptians had abundant reeds, and thus used papyrus, while the Asia Minor city of Pergamum didn’t have the papyrus reeds growing anywhere near, but had plenty of cattle, and thus made parchment out of leather. This in turn survived better in the cold climate of Europe, and so its use stuck, while papyrus died out.

I’ve found too much interesting stuff to fit into one post, so I’m going to turn my findings into a series of articles. The first one is going to go up on Tuesday night, and will be about Sumerians, Babylonians, and stuff a clever scribe can do with clay.

———————–
* Gold nibs? They’re for durability, apparently. Alternatively, a steel nib with an iridium tip can be used.

(Image by RedblueNY)

Not sure what attracts me so much about these pens: maybe it’s that they’re slim, or that they’re colourful, or the sparkles. But they look very pleasant to write with.

I find it much easier to write with thin pens than thick ones, despite ergonomics apparently demanding the opposite. Maybe it’s that I have small hands, or maybe it’s the feeling of power I feel over a tiny pen: will I snap it? or allow it to live and write another day?

← Previous Page

• Subscribe

  Subscribe by RSS Feed
  What's a Feed?
  
  

  Subscribe by email:

• They Make Paper Things

  • Pepperina Press
  • Stationery Scoop
  • The Finer Things
  • This Old Hen House

• They Make Pens

  • Richard Ink

• They Talk Stationery

  • Dave’s Mechanical Pencils
  • Joy of Erasers
  • Notebookism
  • Pencil Grinder
  • Pencil Revolution
  • Pencil Talk
  • Pencil Things
  • Rhodia Drive
  • Timberlines