REVIVE THE ART OF LETTER WRITING
It’s time to put pen to paper. Here’s everything you need to keep this time-honoured tradition alive
From pigeon post to snail mail, love letters to postcards, there is no doubting the romance of penning and posting handwritten letters. Alas, in the age of email and two-second texts, letter writing is perceived as an out of date indulgence. We beg to differ! What a written letter may lack in efficiency and economy, it makes up for in gravitas and joy. Put on proper paper, written by someone’s own hand, a word has more weight and a sentence more spark. Follow our four-step guide to stylish correspondence.
1 THE DESKS
Molteni & C philosophically defines a desk as ‘more of a place than an object, where ideas take shape and are turned into writings or projects’. Jasper Morrison’s latest design for the brand, ‘Ink’ ( below, £4,722; molteni.it), is made from American walnut, contains Led-lit drawers with built-in sockets, and can be folded away at any moment.
However, if you wish to sit at a design classic to pen your letters, we suggest the 20th-century Danish design supremo Poul Kjaerholm’s ‘PK52 Student Desk’. A smaller version of his ‘Professor Desk’, it was designed for the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1955 and has been reissued by Carl Hansen & Søn (above, £2,210, Skandium; skandium.com). Superbly simple, the desk’s steel frame comes in grey or black lacquer; the tabletop either Oregon pine or oak veneer. We also love the ‘Hyppolite’ desk by Florence Watine for Hartô (£695, Future & Found; futureandfound.com), a new take on the classic bureau.
2 THE STATIONERY
London-based Esme Winter’s fantastically thick-stock greetings cards (from £3 each, Twentytwentyone; twentytwentyone.com) are all printed with bold graphics that anyone would be overjoyed to receive. Want something a bit more personal? Papier’s contemporary cards (left, 90p per card; papier.com) fit the bill perfectly – add your name or address.
3 THE PENS
Family-owned German fountain pen brand Lamy has just turned 50, and has a beautiful pen for every budget: from the anniversary-edition ‘Black Amber’ pen with gold nib (above left, £450) to the classic ‘Safari’ (£18; the coolest shade is Bauhaus yellow). Buy both – plus almost every other pen worth having – from choosingkeeping.com.
4 THE STAMPS
They cost the same as regular ones, so why not dispatch your envelope with one of Royal Mail’s special stamps? 2017’s range includes ‘Songbirds’ (out 4 May) and ‘Landmark Buildings’ (out 13 July; royalmail.com).
Tate Britain’s retrospective of Bradford-born David Hockney is the largest exhibition of his work ever held: paintings, drawings and video created over the last 60 years will be on display. There are old favourites – the sunbleached 1970s Los Angeles paintings such as Pool with Two Figures, famous double portraits and the later landscapes of Yorkshire – but also rarer, delicate drawings of the outspoken artist’s nearest and dearest, including his parents, Celia Birtwell, Andy Warhol and poet WH Auden (9 February– 29 May; tate.org.uk). Hockney super-fans will also be delighted at the publication of A Bigger Book (above; Taschen, £1,750), the ‘sumosized’ tome in a limited edition of 9,000. It can be viewed in bookshops across the country, including Salt’s Mill in Hockney’s native West Yorkshire (saltsmill.org.uk). Vanessa Bell, a key player in the bohemian Bloomsbury Group, was an accomplished painter and a product designer. A new show at Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibits her portraits (self portrait, left), still lifes and landscapes, which were influenced by her mentor John Singer Sargent. Visitors will also gain an insight into Bell’s concept of the home as a ‘cultural safe house’, in which she encouraged inhabitants to think, act and create freely through her ceramics, fabrics and textile designs for her furniture design enterprise Omega Workshops (8 February–4 June; dulwichpicturegallery.org).