American Express

Sustainable Stationery Part I

Sustainable Stationery Part I

I used to like summers in Toronto. The timeless evenings when dusk seemed to linger for hours, and the nights were balmy and made for ice cream. ...

Taking A Hike

My getaway for the past few summers has been a ‘camp’ in the Adirondack Mountains. It is a series of rustic cabins scattered around an old farmhou...

Pencils, Pencils, Pencils

Depending on your sense of nostalgia, writing with a pencil can be a “Madeleine moment’. For me, the smell of wood shavings and sharpened graphite ...

The May Sale

The people closest to me will gently point out that I tell the same stories again and again. If you’ve heard this one, please forgive me. I open...

My First Sale

I have been selling fountain pens for 35 years. My first day in retail was the day I opened the shop, back in September of 1987. But it wasn’t th...

Spring Training

Schoolkids are taught the equinox is the beginning of spring. For me, winter ends three weeks earlier. The beginning of March is the start of spri...

I'm Sorry, And You're Welcome

When someone walks into the shop, whether well-versed or new to the world of writing instruments, there is a moment of engagement. It is often a da...

A New Year

I trust you had a reasonable end-of-year break. Almost certainly, some of you were bogged down, snowed in, or missed flights. I hope the frustratio...

December Business (And Busyness)

Over the past 35 years, December has been, for me, a month of intense business and busyness. The intensity of activity in the shop is at once ...

The Gift

Now that Halloween is behind us (my least favourite holiday—but that is for a sidebar conversation), I feel the pull towards the intensity of the ...

Pen and Paper

“Wow, you use a fountain pen!?”⁠⁠In our writing community, there is a shared understanding of why we love pens and paper so much. The combination ...

35 Years!

September 2022 marks 35 years of Laywine's. It is hard to imagine that when I first saw the shops in London selling nothing but organizers, and s...

Common Modern

When we first saw Common Modern's products in Paris in January of 2020, we fell in love immediately. Their vibrant and modern approach to stationer...