For a whole lot of us, stationery comprised of simple Camlin pencils, Reynolds ballpens and regular notebooks.
Not any more.
High-end brands bringing out limited edition products and instruments are fast giving stationery a new look.
Maestro’s writings
The Leonardo da Vinci pen, created by Aurora, a historic company in the world of stationery, combines beauty and technical precision in its high-quality writing instruments. The Leonardo pen has an elegant barrel in vermeil and a gold-plated cap with lacquer-filled engravings, drawn from the maestro’s paintings. The nib is in 18-carat gold and this precious object is presented in a refined case made of wood and satin and also has a customised paperweight. Price: Rs 11.5 lakh
Inspired by lit
Montblanc’s latest writing instrument is inspired by George Bernard Shaw, especially the playwright’s character Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion. The dark green marbled lacquer softens ring by ring towards the cap. What’s more, Eliza’s origin is also recollected in the fine flower engraving on the handcrafted nib of 18-carat gold. On the cap, under the ivory-coloured Montblanc’s star, there is engraved the sweeping signature of Shaw. Price: Rs 99,000
Back to basics
Dastakar is an organisation that works towards keeping alive the indigenous crafts of India. Apart from garments and jewellery, Dastakar brings out stationery too, mostly from handmade paper. The products include diaries, telephone address books, notepads, bags, wrapping paper, greeting cards, envelopes, gift tags, cards, and file covers which make for interesting desktop accessories. Interestingly, paintings like Godhna, Madhubani, Patachitra have been extensively used to develop such products. Affordable, the range, starts from Rs 150 onwards
Notable notebook
We just love the Burberry notebook, covered in the brand’s classic checks (see picture). This has lined pages with neat silver and the the first page is stamped in silver with the trademark ‘Burberry established 1856’ inscription. It’s cost: Rs 4,000.
We would strongly recommend Louis Vuitton classic notebooks too. The notebooks from this brand — embossed with the trademark logo — also includes popular travel notebooks. By the way, a few years ago, LV also included Mumbai in its collection of “travel notebooks”. These included water colour illustrations, 70 pages of blank space and though it’s sold out as of now, it costs Rs 4,500. PS: It comes with five Louis Vuitton postcards and pencils by LV too
