Folio of Hours
A devotional set of twenty-four loose leaves, each bearing a single hour’s meditation. Hand-laid Abaca, indigo flyleaves, hand-stitched portfolio in goat parchment.
$2,400 · the set
An atelier of letters — since MCMXIX
Scriptorium
Letters made by hand, for over a century.
Sumi & iron-gall ink
Cotton-rag, deckle-edged
Bound by hand
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Our Craft
For one hundred and seven years a small studio above a stationer’s on Front Street has done one thing: make paper, mix ink, and set letters by hand. The work is slow on purpose. A single octavo edition takes nine weeks from rag to ribbon.
We pulp our own cotton in the iron beater bequeathed to us by the Plainfield Mill in 1947. The fibres are agitated for forty hours, drained on fine bronze screens, and pressed through woollen felts — never plastic. The deckle leaves its soft ragged edge intact; we will not trim it.
Our sumi is ground each morning on a slate inkstone with three drops of well water. The pigment is lampblack from pine soot, bound with bone glue and rested in cedar boxes for a year. It dries to the deep matte black of a raven’s wing — no other black behaves quite the same on the page.
Each piece is signed in the lower margin by the maker, dated in roman numerals, and given a sequence number not larger than the edition allows. When a run is complete the press is locked; the matrices are returned to their cabinet; the year is closed.
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Limited Editions
Three works, hand-set this season — each numbered, each signed, each released only when the binder declares it ready.
The Plainfield Letters
Twelve octavo volumes correspondence between the founder and her sister, 1919–1934. Letterpress on cotton-rag, deckle-edged, bound in Saltillo morocco with raised cords.
$5,800 · per volume
Codex Nocturnum
A nocturnal commonplace book, large quarto, blank ruled in faint silver-point. For private correspondence not yet written. Solander box, hand-tooled.
$9,200 · the codex
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The Atelier
The studio occupies four rooms above a stationer’s shop. North light through tall casement windows; a sash that has not been painted shut since 1942.
Five hands work here on any given week. A papermaker, a typesetter, a binder, a colourist for the marbled endpapers, and a single apprentice taken on every fourth year. The kettles boil; the press groans; the cedar drawers slide open and shut. We do not take orders by telephone.
Visitors are welcome by appointment on the first and third Thursdays of the month, between two and five. Tea is offered in the back room. Children are welcome — provided their hands are clean and their letters are slow.
— The Maker, in residence
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Send a letter
We answer correspondence by post within a fortnight, or by electronic letter within three working days — whichever the writer prefers.