Seen in the wild

A visit to Shanghai’s Baixin Bookstore

 in Seen in the wild  tagged Baixin Bookstore / Shanghai / 上海 by

There’s one video I missed out in my previous series of Shanghai related blog posts: A visit to Shanghai’s Baixin Bookstore in August 2017.

The video is very shaky. Don’t watch if you get dizzy easily.

I couldn’t resist and bought the Delguard in 0.3mm.

Some of the stationery in this video:
0:35 Campo Marzio
0:42 Kaweco
0:57 Picasso
1:05 Parker
1:26 Sheaffer
1:34 Lamy
1:48 Pelikan
1:58 TWSBI
2:08 Juice
2:11 Pilot
2:15 Sarasa
2:22 Stabilo
2:25 Orenz
2:27 Schneider
2:44 Mono
3:00 DelGuard
3:34 Carl

If you liked this video: here’s a small selection of more Shanghai related videos and blog posts.

Visiting the Life by city’super store in Shanghai 

Visiting Lamy’s store in Shanghai’s Raffles City

Visiting a stationery store on Shanghai’s FuZhou Road

Lamy at Raffles City in Shanghai 

Shanghai stationery 

Overpriced stationery in Shanghai 

Muji’s Low Centre of Gravity Mechanical Pencil 

Lamy’s Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean pens 

30 kg of Pencils 1

 in Dixon / Fila / Pencils / Seen in the wild  tagged Amazon UK / Dirk Gently / Dixon / Douglas Adams / Ticonderoga by

I’d like an eraser, two notepads and 30 kg of pencils, please.

Also: notice the price difference between the first item, a dozen Ticonderogas for £2.69, and the third item, the same product for £19.99.

Startlingly expensive. Yes, I think if I were to tell you how much more expensive it was it would be fair to say that you would be startled.1

(By the way, that’s 643.123% more expensive2.)

PS: Find out more..

  1. Freely adapted from Chapter 27 of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams, 1987. [↩]
  2. Said Wolfram. [↩]

The Treasury Tag – A Very British Stationery Item? 20

 in Seen in the wild  tagged treasury tags by

 

Getting ready

 

It’s May 4th, but if you want to see a Star Wars post at Bleistift today you’ll have to look at an old blog post.

Instead, today’s post will be about an item of stationery I’ve never seen before I came to the UK.

I’ve been working for a university for 16 years now, but even though I usually see this item when I go to the my department’s stationery cupboard I never really found much use for it, except during exam time.

I’m talking1 about the treasury tag.

Well, this morning me and my colleague were invigilating an exam for our first year students and the treasury tag came in very handy indeed. If you haven’t seen one: It’s a piece of string with mini metal (or plastic) bars/rods at the end. You use to to connect different hole punched documents – in this case exam answer books and graph paper or supplementary exam answer books.

Treasury tags are usually much longer than needed, so the connection is quite loose, but the length of the bars mean that the tag won’t fall out unexpectetdly

I’d like to know whether treasury tags are used or known outside the UK. Please let me know whether these are known or maybe even commonly used in your country.

Gott Connect ‘Em All

I also came across a few Staedtler Noris pencils from students and even some Noricas – they tend to be blue in the UK, unlike the American ones which tend to be black.

Before the storm…

  1. actually: writing ;^P [↩]

Repairs & Alterations – All On Liberal Terms 2

 in Seen in the wild  tagged Blackwing / Calepino / DUX / Gedess / Kaweco / Manchester / Midori / Northern Quarter by


The weather was really nice this weekend and since there was something we had to do in Manchester anyway we decided to spend the afternoon in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Fred Aldous, mentioned in the past, is also located in the Northern Quarter.


One of the shops I discovered and I haven’t been to before is the Dedstock General Store. It’s a gem of a store selling a nice choice of wares for it’s size, including stationery, items for shaving (including Mühle blades), enamel items and other things.


The owner was just working on a sewing machine. He said he was mending things, but it looked like a much bigger operation (the word upcycling and hundred year old garments spring to mind).


In terms of stationery there were Dux and Gedess sharpeners, Kaweco and Mindori pens and accessories, the Blackwing remake and Calepino notebooks. Items priced above £50 were stored behind the counter (no photo, sorry).

Repairs & Alterations – All On Liberal Terms

I’m happy I came across this unusual store and will visit again next time I’m in the Northern Quarter.

A bestselling Noris 4

 in Pencils / Seen in the wild / Staedtler  tagged Noris / seen in the wild / Staedtler / WHSmith by

Certainly well deserved: when visiting a WHSmith1 store recently I noticed that their Noris pencils got a little sign, indicating that they are the bestselling pencils.


As you might know I am partial to Staedtler’s Noris, so couldn’t resist adding this to my stream of Noris blog posts. Here’s a small selection of Noris blog posts to pick and choose: A digital Noris, A broken Clarks Noris, A different kind of Noris in the wild, Neil Gaiman’s Noris pencils, Noris & Co, Shaun the Sheep’s Noris, Upcycling with a Noris, A Noris at the Cricket, A Finnish Noris…, A French Noris…, A Franken Noris, A Franconian Noris,
Noris in the wild, Noris shavings, Noris of the Woods, Uncle Noris, and The Noris, then and now.

By the way, since we are on the topic of Staedtler anyway: they have a nice online Mandala creator on their website. The choice of patterns from different artists is amazing. 

  1. A British high street chain with a big stationery selection. [↩]