A recent family trip to Hamburg [1]which was my first ever trip to Hamburg included a trip to Alsterhaus, a posh department store that very much reminded us of Harvey Nichols in Manchester. Excuse the wide angle distortions of the photo but because of construction work I couldn’t move further away The Alsterhaus sells many posh brands (think Armani, Chanel, Hermes, …), but unexpectedly we also found an extensive selection of stationery brands on one of the higher floors. Some brands, like Graf von Faber-Castell, S. T. Dupont and Caran d’Ache take up large parts of the stationery corner’s luxu ..read more

That came as a surprise: Lamy bought by Mitsubishi https://www.presseportal.de/en/pm/64164/5724336 The post Lamy appeared first on Bleistift ..read more

Happy Chinese (or Lunar) New Year! Goodbye Rabbit. Welcome Dragon. To celebrate the occasion Caran d’Ache released a special version of the 849 ballpoint pen: the DRAGON Burgundy Special Edition. It was/is sold out in most shops until new stock arrives, but luckily I was able to buy the last 849 Dragon pen from Papeterie Berlin. If you look at the surface against the light you can see the different layers of paint. The pen looks really beautiful. The post Happy Chinese New Year of the Dragon appeared first on Bleistift ..read more

Seen in the current issue of Der Spiegel, a weekly news magazine from Germany: a whole page about a German journalism prize, featuring a stock photo of what seems to be a photoshopped Staedtler Noris. The post A prizeworthy Noris appeared first on Bleistift ..read more

My first order from Papier und Stift (translation: Paper and pen) came in. This online shop’s focus is on fountain pens, but there is also a nice selection of non-fountain-pen-stationery. The main trigger for my order were notebooks with Tomoe River paper, but I couldn’t resist adding a few other small items. I also ordered their ‘magazine’ for €1, which is more of a catalogue than a magazine and features a selection of nice stationery they sell. The ‘magazine’ reminds me to some extent of a catalogue I got from Carta Pura many years ago. I scanned my 2010 Carta Pura catalogue recently and h ..read more

Bleistift reader Tomasz Maped sent in another great find: Miniature Calendar. A web calendar with a miniature photo for every day. There is a big section on stationary-related photos. You can find some nice examples below. Copyright Tatsuya TanakaCopyright Tatsuya TanakaCopyright Tatsuya Tanaka The images in this blog post has been taken from https://miniature-calendar.com/. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service. The post Miniature Calendar appeared first on Bleistift ..read more

Arrived today: my Hoboichi Techo for 2024. I used to order my Techos from the Hobonichi store in Japan, but now that I live in Germany and only need the notebook itself, it turned out much cheaper to order it from PenStore.nl. Of course you don’t get the gimmicks that come with the Techo: a 3-colour uni Jetstream pen and this year also a little bag, but postage from Japan would have been about as much as the Techo itself. It’s nice to be able to easily order from continental Europe again. Since Brexit I missed out on a few nice stationery items that were either too expensive to get into the U ..read more

I’m not sure why, but the most popular video on the Bleistift YouTube channel is a video explaining how to use Staedtler’s lead pointer. How to use a lead pointer tub might not be that obvious. That must certainly a factor contributing to the video’s popularity, but it still doesn’t explain why the video remains popular to this day. Many of the comments show that buyers of the lead pointer often don’t know how to use it properly and that they wish they had known about the video earlier. Three years ago, one of the comments (see above) posted under the video said that Staedtler should point to ..read more

My wife made me aware of an interesting book that will be published next month: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. The author, Keith Houston, author of “Shady Characters”, has been mentioned on Bleistift before. You can find out more about the book in this article by the economist: How the pocket calculator paved the way for the digital age. A random photo of one of my calculators The post Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator appeared first on Bleistift ..read more

After recently moving from the UK to Germany, this year I was involved in the Pelikan Hub Bremen, rather than the Preston Hub that used to be my home hub. The Pelikan Hub took place in a Greek restaurant in the North of Bremen. The location was chosen as it was close to public transport and also offered a big car park. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bleistift (@bleistift.blog) Some numbers linked this Hub: Unfortunately, three of the participants who signed up didn’t take part. There were also another three people who didn’t sign up but wanted to come along. In the end, how ..read more