Vintage Paper

[poetman]

I have long been trying to find out, though unsuccessfully, what kind of paper was common for writers between the 20's through 40's? Were legals pads standard? I don't think so. As far as I can tell from manuscripts, paper was blank, unlined, took to fountain pens well, and ages to a light cream color, suggesting that the original colors were an off-white, not a harsh, "bright" white like standard copy paper. I have no idea, though, whether such paper was cotton, bond, pulp, laid, smooth, or any other variation. Any thoughts or potential resources are much appreciated!

Thanks, all!

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Tablet paper" was the most common thing for people who hand-wrote rather than typed. There were many different types of this paper, ranging from a linen-textured bond paper that took ink well to the rough pulp paper used in pencil tablets. The latter type of tablet was usually ruled, with the familiar "Big Chief" type of school tablet being the most common. Bond-paper tablets were usually unruled.

 

[2jakes]

I have long been trying to find out, though unsuccessfully, what kind of paper was common for writers between the 20's through 40's? Were legals pads standard? I don't think so. As far as I can tell from manuscripts, paper was blank, unlined, took to fountain pens well, and ages to a light cream color, suggesting that the original colors were an off-white, not a harsh, "bright" white like standard copy paper. I have no idea, though, whether such paper was cotton, bond, pulp, laid, smooth, or any other variation. Any thoughts or potential resources are much appreciated!

Thanks, all!

"When Hemingway starts on a project he always begins with a pencil, using the reading board to write on onionskin typewriter paper. The page completed, he clips it facedown on another clipboard that he places off to the right of the typewriter."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...=YcTBZVjRL_y7swdeI_THFw&bvm=bv.88528373,d.eXY

I used "Big Chief" tablets during my first years in
elementary. The material was made of newsprint paper & was not partial
to pencil erasures of which I made plenty in my youth...

 

[poetman]

Thank you for the useful quote and helpful link, 2jakes. Lizzie, thank you for these very helpful details. Do you have any source for this where I could find out more information, or is it conversational knowledge? Also, what is "linen-textured bond paper"? Was this the most common writing paper? Wouldn't the linen-texture suggest a raised surface that made the writing less smooth?

Thanks!

 

[2jakes]

Thank you for the useful quote and helpful link, 2jakes. Lizzie, thank you for these very helpful details. Do you have any source for this where I could find out more information, or is it conversational knowledge? Also, what is "linen-textured bond paper"? Was this the most common writing paper? Wouldn't the linen-texture suggest a raised surface that made the writing less smooth?

I have a "copy" of a diary from the 1840s. This copy is on plain paper & typewritten.
The original is in a museum, written in long-hand & many of the words or phrases are no longer in use. Makes for an interesting reading of how folks lived back then.
I want to preserve this diary for a friend using some kind of "linen" type paper in long-hand form.
I went to a local stationary store & the folks were able to provide information &
found many varieties of paper that are available & what is best to use for a specific project.
I believe they would have the answers for your particular needs.
Good Luck !

 

[Stanley Doble]

I have seen interviews with famous authors done in the Golden Era in which the interviewer asks what kind of paper, pens or pencils they use and similar questions. This always exasperates the authors, as if the kind of paper has anything to do with the quality of their writing.

Different authors preferred different materials but from the teens or twenties on, a typewriter and ordinary white paper was most common.

Thoreau complained that he had a hard job finding plain paper journals, most of the ones in the shops were ruled for accounts. This was in the 1840s.

Mark Twain wrote in longhand on plain paper with a pen. But in about 1875 he bought one of the first typewriters made, and claimed to be the first person who used a typewriter to produce literature. He dictated Tom Sawyer to a typist.

He did not consider the experiment a success. He got rid of the typewriter and went back to hand writing.

Somerset Maugham wrote all his books in longhand, using a pencil, in a stenographer's pad on his knee.

The most expensive paper was probably used by cartoonist Chuck Jones. His father started a number of businesses when Chuck was a boy and every time he would order the most expensive stationary with elaborate colored letterheads. When the business went bust he would bring the leftover stationary home and give it to the kids. Chuck would turn the page over and draw cartoons in crayon, pencil and colored pencils.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thank you for the useful quote and helpful link, 2jakes. Lizzie, thank you for these very helpful details. Do you have any source for this where I could find out more information, or is it conversational knowledge? Also, what is "linen-textured bond paper"? Was this the most common writing paper? Wouldn't the linen-texture suggest a raised surface that made the writing less smooth?

Thanks!

You'll find listings for all these types of writing paper in any Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog of the Era -- both firms offered an exstensive stationery department.

The linen-textured paper isn't nubby-rough -- it's more like the texture of the surface of a playing card, only not at all glossy or slick. If you've ever handled old letters or business stationery you'll recognize the type of paper I mean -- it's not like today's all-purpose copy paper, and it tends to be a bit more textured than modern business stationery which has to be optimized for use in a computer printer. It's textured enough that you can feel it, but not so much that it would cause a fountain pen to blur or skip. It also has a very crisp, substantial feel. The better grades were even watermarked.

My mother was still writing letters on tablets of this type of paper into the sixties, and for all I know you still might be able to find it if you look around in independent office-supply or stationery stores (if there are any of those left.)

For my part, I still use Big Chief tablets, from a large pile of them I bought at a liquidation sale about ten years ago, to keep inventory at work. You can still order them from school-supply places.

 

[poetman]

I have seen interviews with famous authors done in the Golden Era in which the interviewer asks what kind of paper, pens or pencils they use and similar questions. This always exasperates the authors, as if the kind of paper has anything to do with the quality of their writing.

Different authors preferred different materials but from the teens or twenties on, a typewriter and ordinary white paper was most common.

Thoreau complained that he had a hard job finding plain paper journals, most of the ones in the shops were ruled for accounts. This was in the 1840s.

Mark Twain wrote in longhand on plain paper with a pen. But in about 1875 he bought one of the first typewriters made, and claimed to be the first person who used a typewriter to produce literature. He dictated Tom Sawyer to a typist.

He did not consider the experiment a success. He got rid of the typewriter and went back to hand writing.

Somerset Maugham wrote all his books in longhand, using a pencil, in a stenographer's pad on his knee.

The most expensive paper was probably used by cartoonist Chuck Jones. His father started a number of businesses when Chuck was a boy and every time he would order the most expensive stationary with elaborate colored letterheads. When the business went bust he would bring the leftover stationary home and give it to the kids. Chuck would turn the page over and draw cartoons in crayon, pencil and colored pencils.

To what interviews are you referring?

 

[Stanley Doble]

Interviews published in magazines, newspapers and books. If the interviewer was young enough and green enough he or she might ask what kind of paper, pens or pencils the author used and similar questions about technique. As if you could become a great writer by buying the same brand of pencils. Or another Picasso by buying the same brand of paint.

There was also the question of carbon paper. It was the only way to make copies. A writer might make a carbon copy of a story for his files when he sent the original to his agent, to a publisher or to a magazine.

 

[Nobert]

I I have no idea, though, whether such paper was cotton, bond, pulp, laid, smooth, or any other variation. Any thoughts or potential resources are much appreciated!

Thanks, all!

Paper production in the U.S. switched over to mainly wood pulp around the 1870s/80s.

This is just a guess but I would imagine that writing paper, even in notebooks, used to be more heavily sized to better handle the liquid ink of fountain pens.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some of the better grades of ink tablets boasted of their rag content, with some of the top-quality brands claiming to be 25 percent rag-based. And then on the opposite extreme, you had Big Chief and his colleagues, where you could often see splinters and wood chips in the finished paper.

 

[Stanley Doble]

This just in from The World Of Raymond Chandler In His Own Words by Barry Day

"I do all my work on yellow paper. Sheets cut in half, typed the long way, triple-spaced. The pages must be from 125 to 150 words and they are so short you don't get prolix. If there isn't a little meat on each, there is something wrong."
- October 1, 1957

 

[LizzieMaine]

That sounds very much like what we used to call "math paper," because it was handed out by grade school teachers for working out math problems. It was a newsprint-style paper, yellowish-tan color, and appeared to be made by slicing a regular 8 1/2 x 11 sheet in half.

 

[Nobert]

People who talk about James Thurber's drawings mention his compulsively doodling on, among other things, the sheets of yellow copy paper provided by the office. I also assumed that this was an unruled version of the spongy yellow paper I remember from grade school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That type of paper -- yellow, unruled, rough pulp composition -- was the same type of paper put up on rolls for use in teletype machines.

 

[Stanley Doble]

From the mid 1800s on, almost everyone used steel nib dip pens. The best pen nibs were made in England. I don't know when fountain pens came out but they were something of a luxury.

Ball point pens came out right after WW2 and at first, were very expensive. I have an old "do it yourself" magazine with plans to make your own ballpoint pen!

The old dip pen and ink well did not go out of use in schools until the late fifties. As a school boy about 1960, my teacher insisted I use a pen and ink in an effort to improve my lousy handwriting even though by that time, everyone brought their own ballpoint pens to school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The US Post Office Department didn't discontinue the use of public dip pens until 1956, and it was considered a great and tragic moment by those who mourned the loss of something which had actually been universally loathed for its rough-nibbed, ink-caked, corroded, poor-writing national joke reality.

My school desks in the sixties and early seventies always included the inkwell holes, but most of the actual glass wells were long gone. If you got a desk that still had one, it was considered a mark of distinction. Or distinktion.

 

[MikeKardec]

I have seen interviews with famous authors done in the Golden Era in which the interviewer asks what kind of paper, pens or pencils they use and similar questions. This always exasperates the authors, as if the kind of paper has anything to do with the quality of their writing.

I got a laugh out of that! That's exactly the sort of response my Dad would have had. "Whatever I could get a hold of" probably would have been his reply. When he had a choice (in the '30s and '40s) he used "onion skin" because it was easier to erase and was thin enough to work well with carbon paper. Thin was also important because of postage. An author could go broke posting and reposting manuscripts to different publishers

A google search for "Corrasable Bond" a name I thought I remembered from my childhood tells us two things, one that it was used mostly in the '50s and '60s (thus my childhood) and that an editor's assistant at EP Dutton stated, "no real writer types on erasable bond." Dad wrote 90 novels on Corrasable brand paper and a good half dozen of them were published by Dutton ... it just goes to show you there are no rules. The stuff is claimed to be smudgy but it was never my experience that quality made it unreadable.

In my childhood Dad used Corrasable then carbon paper then a yellow sheet. The yellow remained his copy. Earlier he could not afford carbon or extra paper, so there was never more than one copy of a story! He had the act of extracting paper from the typewriter, filing the pages and reloading with white and yellow sheets and the same piece of carbon down to a science. He could be back in action on the next page in seconds!

For more permanent records (manuscripts, because they were shipped off to publishers, were not "permanent") Dad used Boorum & Pease "NoTear." This was a notebook paper with a fabric reinforcing strip down the left side around the holes. It was used for journals, financial records etc. and seems to have worked very well in a typewriter. His use of this paper dates to the 1930s. I believe that the name if not the exact sort of paper is still in existence.