Paper Matters

Monday morning staff meeting with matching pantone mugs and fresh baked lemon loaf. Yum Yum.

I find it hard to motivate myself to ride my bike to work when the the weather is cold and grey but now that the sun is finally shining I decided the time was right to start cycling again. What a joy it was to ride along the Thames this morning and arrive to work feeling refreshed rather than half asleep.

For the avid cyclist and the fair weather ones like me, we have added a new bicycle motif to our collection. Use them to spruce up your correspondence cards and remind your friends of the pleasure of riding a bike.

... is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself." Oscar Wilde, whilst living in nearby Chelsea, passed on his advice to friends and colleagues on bespoke stationery, a little sparse by today's standards. A modern day collector might advise holding on to his correspondence, given the prices they received at a recent Christie's auction.

We may be biased around here, but we were delighted to have the virtues of personal letter writing described in a recent Daily Mail article (28 December 2008).

I know now that my parents were absolutely right to insist on this small but meaningful courtesy.

Now a present giver and hostess in my own right, I still harbour a grudge against the bride who didn’t take the time to write to thank me for the wedding present I took the trouble to pick out.

Equally, I treasure the beautifully worded missives from dinner guests, house guests and friends who not only appreciated my efforts, but let me know that they had.

It would be all too easy to think that with the advent of countless more contemporary methods of communicating, the art of letter-writing was about to be consigned to a bygone era.

However, those in the know insist that, despite the encroachment of text messaging and email, letter-writing is enjoying a renaissance.