There is a new blog on the block: Stationery Traffic. I thought this is worth mentioning as it would be a shame if you miss this because of all the other exciting developments going on at the moment, i.e. all the blog posts about the new Blackwing and the revival of the Pencil Revolution blog. There have already been several interesting articles and if you do not use an RSS reader the blog roll on the right is quite useful to keep track of all the latest posts in various blogs.
This post might be of interest if you live in the UK. Tesco does have a few Back to School offers at the moment, including Stabilo’s move easyergo mechanical pencil for only 87p (~$1.34, ~€1.05) ..but only for the right-handed version. The left-handed version is quite a bit more expensive (£3, ~$4.62, ~€3.64 ..does this count as left-handed discrimination?)
Delvaux shop in the Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert
Over the past few weeks I have written posts about two different pencil cases: the Sonnenleder pencil case Berit and the Eberhard Faber Lederetui. Both are made from leather and price-wise both are somewhere in the middle (Berit: €36 / $45 / £29, Lederetui: €15 / $19 / £12). Today I want show what pencil cases are available at the more extreme ends of the price scale.
Delvaux pencil case Prime
I have seen the expensive one I want to present today, the Prisme pencil case from Delvaux, in the posh Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert in Brussels …on a recent trip to Belgium. Delvaux was founded in 1829 in Brussels and describes itself as ‘the oldest fine leather luxury goods company in the world’. This pencil case is available in two colours and will set you back € 140 (~$177, ~£115) …but you will own a pencil case with (the following is taken from their web site) a triangular profile that is pale Basane leather lined and has a double pen holder in leather stitched to the base. Furthermore the brass accessories have a a brushed palladium or brushed gilded finish.
In case you wonder… I did not buy one 🙂
Rheita Schüleretui, closed
On the other end of the spectrum we have cheap pencil cases, pre-filled with pencils, for children. On my last trip to Germany I saw that most of them sell for about €3 (~$3.80, ~£2.50). If you pay a bit less than €3 you can get a no name pencil case filled with ruler, eraser and lots of no name pencils. If you spent a few cents more you can get a much better one, like this 50 piece pencil case (article number 406-0) from Rheita, which I bought for less than €3.50. It includes colour pencils, rulers, an eraser, paper clips, a sharpener and ink cartridges (in Bavarian schools, possibly even in all German schools, children have to use fountain pens).
Rheita Schüleretui
Compared to other German stationery companies Rheita, or Rheita-Krautkrämer, is one of the young’uns. Rheita’s history started in 1948, when the brothers Oswald and Fridolin Krautkrämer established “Rheingold-Tafel”, a company with more than 100 employees, manufacturing school writing slates made from slate and wood. The headquarters were near the river Rhein, hence the name. The company was later renamed Rhein-Tafel, which became RHEI-TA.
Prices: Delvaux – April 2010, Rheita – August 2010
Exchanges rates: August 2010
Last time I was in Germany I discovered a second hand book shop in Würzburg that also displayed stationery in the shop windows. The stationery on display seemed to be a mix of items I have seen in Lexikaliker’s blog and in Manufactum’s catalogue, but there were also a few items I have not seen anywhere else.
Zerkall & Artesanos del Papel paper
Items I saw there for the first time included paper and envelopes from Zerkall Ingres, mouldmade in a paper mill dating to the 16th century, and cotton/linen paper from Artesanos del Papel in Alicante.
One of the items I bought in this book shop is a paper clip from OHTO, a paper clip looking a bit like a picture frame hanger. The informal name seems to be Japan-Clip. It can hold 20 sheets of 80g paper. The standard clip is nickel-plated, selling for 20c each (25¢, 16p), the posh version for 50c (63¢, 41p) is 18K gold-plated.
Japan-Clips with Faber-Castell eraser on Banditapple carnet
The nice thing about these clips is that they still look good even if they hold many sheets of paper, while ordinary paper clips usually look unsightly if you squeeze too many sheets of paper in. On the other hand ordinary paper clips can hold more sheets of paper and seem to be softer to the paper. When you try to squeeze too many sheets of paper (> 25) into the Super Clip it can damage the paper slightly when you remove the paper clip again.
...compared to ordinary paper clips
After using OHTO’s Super Clips for a while I came to appreciate them as re-usable, temporary clips that hold paper together much better and tighter than ordinary paper clips. The fact that I have two different colours helps to distinguish similarly documents I am working with, e.g. two sets of statistics from different years.
Links:
I found this company selling Zerkall Ingres paper in the USA.
JetPens and Cult Pens do not seem this paper clip and I could not find an American or British online shop selling the Japanese paper clip. RSVP and Modulor are two German online shops that have the paper clip in stock and ship to most countries.
If you have visited the Fountain Pen Network in the past, you might have read about Kaufhof in the Pelikan section. Kaufhof is a German department store chain that – sometimes – has good offers when it comes to Pelikan pens, especially Pelikan fountain pens. Except these special offers their prices and choice of stationery is pretty standard. You can, however, also find more unusual stationery there if you are lucky. On a recent trip to Kaufhof in Würzburg I saw these Esprit pencils. Their selling point is the cloth tag at the end of each pencil. These pencils loos quite nice, but I could not convince myself to buy one of these pencils …so I cannot comment on the quality of the lead or the wood used. The pencils are made in China and have an official retail price of £ 0.85 / $ 1.20 / € 0.95 each.
