Blotting too quickly will lift up what makes the ink special and will reduce the sheen. This modern invention is encountering ink blotters for the very first time. Just a quick interlude before I bid you farewell to make mention about inks with sheen. It is a value-add for the product and you’ll only realize how much you’ve missed having it when you try one yourself. I can’t articulate how handy this simple piece of leather is. It prevents shadowing on sub-pages and it is also very useful for protecting the clean, unwritten parts of the page by placing the leather under your hand. While its main purpose is to be used as an ink blotter, it can also be used as a writing pad for comfortable writing (fantastic for a coffee shop, library or anywhere on the go). Each set of notebooks comes with this piece of multi-use leather which is cut to the size of the books. I have never, however, told you about one of my favorite features of these notebooks and that is the split leather that in included in each Everyday Book set. There are several blogs prior to this one where I have done just that. I need not take up your time expounding and waxing poetic about my love for Galen’s Everyday Books. Or, if you are Galen Leather, you can innovate, combining the best characteristics of the traditional leather desk set with the portability of sheets of blotter paper. For modern makers, the renewed awareness of the ink blotter offers an opportunity to expand the category. Herbin who has been making them since its inception in 1670, the attention to pen and ink has kept them flush with blotter users for centuries. As fountain pens have made a resurgence and interest in them has increased, the ink blotter is finding its way back onto people’s desks. Which brings us to now and some happy news for the ink blotter. This fine powder was still in use during medieval times when monks were copying manuscripts and even in the 18 th century as a more economical alternative to sprinkling salt on drying ink, a new, more expensive practice of the bourgeoisie. In fact, pounce, made from the bones of cuttlefish has a long history of use for preparing paper prior to writing and also setting paper afterwards. ink made from hide glue, carbon or bone pigment, ground into a paste and then dried in ceramic bowls, was being sprinkled with pounce to avoid smudging on papyrus. If we go back to 400,000 B.C., pigment was already being made in Africa and mixing tools suggest that sand and clay, combined with the sun were being used to dry and fix the ink. The history of the ink blotter is as long as writing with ink itself. Blotting paper is a textured, thick paper specifically made to quickly absorb excess ink. Before blotters were invented, the preferred method was sprinkling salt over fresh written text to speed the drying process. The term ink blotter refers either to a handheld rocking device or simple blotting paper, both used to absorb excess ink when writing with fountain pens. Sadly for me, long gone are the days when having a proper desk set was a symbol of wealth, professionalism or fashion, but one of the tools of the desk set has survived fads and trends to remain: the ink blotter. With my love of fashion, some would say that my past centuries’ sensibilities have to do with the clothing, but those of you who have read my previous articles are probably clued into the thing that most draws me to palaces, country estates and manors: t he desk set. Countless hours spent watching Merchant Ivory movies, every version of Little Women over and over and just about every episode of Masterpiece Theatre have reaffirmed this. I’ve often thought that I was born in the wrong century.
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