Midsummer Merch Memo

Dear Everyone ~

My ninth anniversary of shopkeeping and teaching on Lincoln Avenue flew by on June 26. Three weeks later, it’s high time to present this year’s little present-with-purchase to celebrate the occasion. Ruby & I have assembled an abundance of Mezzo-Bundlissimi: the scrap-happiest of samplers with the dazzling diversity of our big Bundlissimi, in a smaller size range (business card-ish up to 5 x 7). Splendid for jotting, listing, enclosing, collaging, and experimenting. Until the end of July, every order of $81 or more (excluding shipping or tax) will include a bonus Mezzo-Bundlissimo, beribboned of course.
 
In related papery pleasures, our midsummer merch report highlights a lovely handful of new notecards from the U.K., a delicate new brush pen, and the triumphal return of the much loved Coccoina mini-glue sticks (10g).

James Winrow has added two new birds to his aviary notecard collection: a Purple Sandpiper and a British Robin. We’ve expanded our original set of four notecards & envelopes to become a sextet. The new cards are printed on the same glorious cardstock, fancy but not flighty.

Cambridge Imprint has gotten in the swim with a new pattern called Sea Urchin, which has debuted with a splash. The two colour combos are Sky & Cocoa and Neon. 

 We’re delighted to report that our repertoire of Mary Feddon notecard portfolios has been restocked and two new sets added. My apologies to all the feline fans wondering where the Two Cats & Cats and Compass set has wandered off to. They will be back in a few weeks, and we will broadca’t their arrival immediately.

 My heart went pitter-patter when I spied this notecard duo from British artist & printmaker Sarah Battle. Her whimsical birds ’n’ blooms inhabit a free-flowing domesticity. (A certain muse of mine has gone gaga for the plaid pitcher.) They are sure to swoon your recipients!

Moving northward to Helsinki: We’ve stocked Réka Király’s Herbarium notecards in the shop for many moons, and have finally added them to our online shop, singly and as a set. Black-and-white bearers of delight!

We’ve also added a very fine Japanese brush pen to our writing implement repertory. This brush & its bristles are beautifully slender. The ink is water-based, highly pigmented, and waterproof. It flows smoothly and consistently on a multitude of paper finishes, from Rivoli to Hahnemühle and beyond.

James Winrow
Mary Feddon
Sarah Battle
Réka Király
Lush-ious brush pens

Nary a moment without stationery, Bari
 
PS:
Mark your calendars! The third annual international Stationery Store Day (SSD) is Saturday, August 3—less than three weeks from today! The official SSD swag has arrived and is under protective wraps. We can reveal that there will be washi tape, pads of paper, postcards, stickers, and as always, SSD tote bags! And of course we are making a BZSSSD giftie too. Details forthcoming fast.

Summertime, and the writing is easy

Dear Everyone ~

We are delighted to showcase four new postcards by watercolourist and BZS in-house illustrator Janet Bouldin: three bouquets in beguiling vases and a teapot collage. This is Janet’s inaugural teapot postcard—she has been making these collages with scraps from my bookbinding projects since 2021. We first featured the originals here in our A New Season of Serizawas blog post. 

 The snippets she’s used to make the teapot on this postcard are from a Japanese Katazome paper whose pattern we refer to as Japanese Floating Garden. These scraps were from a buttonhole-stitch book I had made for my postal muse. The texture and colours are reproduced beautifully on the card. 

 Janet comments, “I try to make use of the pieces exactly as they come from Bari, without any alteration, to see if I can make a coffee or tea pot, sometimes even a cup.”
 
The floral postcards are quintessential Janet. “When I’m looking for things to draw and paint, it seems I land most often on a vase with flowers—there’s something calming and meditative about the combination. The hellebore in the bird-shaped pottery pitcher is a bit different and quirkier. The pitcher belongs to a friend I visit. I love the colour of the hellebore and the way it looks a bit like a hat.” 

Janet’s whimsical postcards measure 4 x 6, so you can indeed mail them at the postcard rate. They are all printed, including her previous sets, on Mohawk Superfine in the eggshell finish, a surface that welcomes all manner of writing implements.

Speaking of writing implements, I have just refreshed our Kaweco fountain pen shop listing with three new colours in the Collector series: Mellow Blue, Sage, and Teal. Also in the writing accessory department are four new glorious Kyo-no-oto inks: No. 10, Ochiguriiro (a rich dark chocolate); No 11, Ruriiro (a deep nautical blue); & No. 12, Ryokyuuiro (a glorious aquamarine);  and one Special Edition, Ginkaisyoku (a shimmery sage). It occurs to me, as I’m thinking about ink, that all of these colours are fairly marine, an opportunity to add a soupçon of summer, a seaside breeze, to your communiqués.

A summery summary of Bookful recordings!

Dear Everyone ~

Cat Bennett and I have been co-teaching our Bookful workshop series via Zoom since September of 2020. We began with Bookful of Art. Every year since, we've presented three 4-session workshops with a different theme, from Bookful of Illustrated Notes to Self (No. 6) to Bookful for the Arrival of Winter (No.9). In Boxful of Summer (No. 10), students made a drop-spine box to hold their hand-folded envelopes and notecards that they illustrated with fruits & flora of the season, complete with a slim compartment for the pencils they covered in Cambridge Imprint papers.

In a Bookful workshop, we begin by making a book—learning a different style of binding or structure each time—under my tutelage. In the next three sessions, Cat leads a never-ending variety of drawing & painting exercises, sharing her creative process and inspiring everyone to easily & joyfully fill their books. Here is one of my favourite post-Bookful posts showcasing everyone’s finished oeuvres and their general delight.

We usually take a Bookful break during the summer months. This year, as we conclude our 13th (a binder’s dozen!) Bookful, we’ve decided to make our full-length live recordings of workshops Nos. 1–12 available all summer. Each recording (12-ish hours-ful) comes with the same kit of sumptuous materials as the original workshop (barring the occasional palette refreshment or replacement), plus my standard discount on any tools you order at the same time.

Here are a few of Cat’s Bookful reflections:

​​“ I’m always trying to think of interesting themes for our books that will motivate us to grow our art making. There are endless ways to make art from the same subject matter. At the beginning of each class, I often do a slideshow with examples from other artists giving us ideas about how we might work. This is how I work as an artist too. I’m always looking at art to see what sparks an idea for me. Sometimes it’s a color or the way someone wields a brush with a bit of swagger or a pen with delicate sensitivity. Even when we take inspiration from other artists, the work always turns into our own. In Bookful, we explore drawing and making art in many ways to grow our own art.

As a teacher, I hope to encourage everyone to work with imagination and try things out. Even to go to the edge of their abilities and ideas. That’s where we really discover things and make creative leaps. I’m always excited to see the beautiful work our students do and think the books we make and fill are real treasures. ”

If you’d like to purchase more than one Bookful recording, we are offering this enticement: a 15% discount ($44.25!) on your second recording, likewise on your third, and so on & so fourth. The collected Bookful recordings will be available for purchase until Labor Day, and the recordings will be yours to use for as long as you need.

Bookfuls
 
Calm, cool, collected, Bari

E is for Envelop(e)

Dear Everyone ~

The Abecedary is progressing nicely, albeit a bit more slowly than I had anticipated, because it has become more elaborate, more multi. Our entry for E, for example, features an envelope. Not an illustration of an envelope, an actual envelope. Not a little tipped-on envelope, but an actual full-page envelope.

This envelope was hand-folded by Alyson (a.k.a. my postal muse), sans template, from Selvedge Indigo, one of her “tip-top five Cambridge Imprint (CI) patterns.” The envelope measures 5½" x 7½", and I will bind it into the actual spine of the Abecedary with the other signatures. It will nestle neatly between D for (Decoration) and F (for Folderol). The envelope flap is 2½" deep and happens to align elegantly where it joins the back body, which has a 1¾" throat. This alignment serendipity is one of the joys of covering, wrapping, and enveloping with CI patterns, especially the geometrics.

Ruby wrote envelop(e) on a pair of BZS ’peccably perfed labels (The red-bordered version is not visible at this moment, but will be…) Inside the envelope, we’ve ensconced a pair of BZS postcards and, for good measure, a petite glassine holding the four corners Alyson nicked out to make the envelope and two tidbits from the selvedge of the CI parent sheet. Janet Hoffman, the winner of the Abecedary, is hereby encouraged to entertain the notion of enveloping other/additional snippets (t)herein.

In related “news,” we are delighted to debut three refreshment palettes for the MORE Art of the Hand-folded Envelope kit, for those of you wanting to hand-fold more envelopes out of fabulous papers. All three palettes present an abundance, probably a profusion, of papers (all handily cut to 8½" x 11") we love to slice and score and fold and glue. Plus cover-weight papers by French Paper Co. (in Michigan, not to be confused with Atelier Écluse in Montreal) for making backless envelopes and enticing notecards.

Two new workshops à l’Atelier Écluse

Dear Everyone ~

I’m delighted to debut two new bookbinding workshops via group Zoom: Slim Case-binding with rounded spine and Modern Medieval binding with woven headbands.

My inspiration for the Slim Case-binding (SCB) workshop dates back to my early days of learning how to make books. I first learned to make an SCB in an eight-week course, where each week we advanced to a new level of technical complexity. The SCB was somewhere in the middle. At the time I realized it was an inventive way to make a hardcover book without the need for a book press, and I still feel that way! I continue to cherish the two SCB’s I made way back then—and I thoroughly enjoy using this binding technique when I want to make a thin book (less-ish than an inch and a quarter).

The structure students will make measures a charming 4⅝" x 6⅛" x ½". The workshop kit includes the materials to make two SCB’s, and their cover papers make for a very handsome twosome. We will make one together in the workshop, and you will make the second on your own, with the complete recording for reference and refreshment. Your SCB’s have a soft fabric spine and glued-on headbands. The structure opens completely flat, which is ideal for journaling, sketching, inspiring.

The materials I’ve combined for your Slim Case-binding with rounded spine are Atelier Écluse Ochre decorative handmade papers for the cover: 1 ochre + ecru & 1 ochre + slate. The interior pages are AÉ handmade bookweight papers in natural white with dramatic deckled edges. Both papers are incredibly fold- & glue-friendly. 

Modern Medieval binding with woven headbands is a two-part workshop with a twist on a binding technique dating back to at least the 14th century. We have modernized it with the materials we have selected. These books measure 3" x 4½" x 1¼" with pages folded from Stonehenge. These make lovely little sketchbooks or mini-multimedia marvels. They also look truly lovely on a table or shelf.

Students will learn how to stitch onto leather bands, and perfectly weave them through the front and back covers, which also have an envelope/pocket. You will also learn how to weave a decorative headband onto the top and bottom of your book-block. We will make one together in the workshop, and you will make the second book on your own, with the complete recording for reference and refreshment.

The materials I’ve paired for this workshop are Atelier Écluse rich blue 100% cotton handmade papers and Stonehenge paper for your ten tiny signatures. The two palettes are: Blue & White and Sky & Twilight.

As always, I will live record all workshop sessions, and these will be available to you later the same afternoon to watch and rewatch at your leisure. No previous bookbinding experience is necessary. You will have ample time during each step to ask questions while we work. If you have any questions now, please feel free to call or e me to discuss!

And the winner of the Abecedary is…

Dear Everyone ~

We are hugely grateful to Everyone who sent a postcard (or two or three or more!) for the BZS First Ever Epistolary Drawing! Your enthusiasm and participation—and your creatively expressed anticipation—made the run-up to the actual drawing more exciting than we could have imagined—and heartwarmingly so! 

As soon as the postcards began streaming in, Will, our beloved mail carrier, would have a smile on his face when he handed me each postcard. Sometimes he’d come to the door with an armful of mail and say with a straight face, “Nope, nothing today”, and then a big smile would emerge, and he’d hand me a postcard, or two, or more, one at a time. He enjoyed this lead-up as much as we did, and we love that! 

Naturally, we wanted Will to officially draw the winning postcard—which he did last week—and Ruby was there to photo document us! 

And the winner is … Janet Hoffman!

Janet is a knitter of things, a maker of books, and a lover of paper. Janet had signed up for my recent Correspondence Album workshop via Zoom, though her daughter was getting married the weekend of Lesson 2, in another state, and another time-zone, several hours away … so she woke up very early the day after the wedding (the day of the workshop) and made it home in time to join us via Zoom!

The message on Janet’s postcard is addressed “To my fellow artists,” which we love. She writes, “This postcard encompasses many of the aspects of my creative journey. The photo is by a Scottish photographer who is married to a Scottish knitwear designer who creates beautiful knitwear patterns, yarn, and delightful books. All things I love. It also highlights my love of traveling and exploring all kinds of art in other contexts.” The Tomie de Paola stamp was a perfect choice for Janet’s sentiments. And now she has won the Abecedary at the end of the rainbow!

Later last week, Ruby & I made a garland displaying all of the postcards —each attached with two teeny Japanese paper covered butterfly clips to Japanese cording. The garland looks so festive in the shop that we are inclined to keep it up for the summer. We invite you to visit … and take a gander at the garland. 

If you’re able to drop by soon-ish, you’ll also have a chance to admire the Abecedary pages in person! We are putting the finishing touches on several pages this week, and I’ll be binding the following week. You will not have to wear gloves, though we will invite you to wash your hands—using one of our prized lavender soaps from the UK.

I want to assure Everyone that each and every page will be xoxtremely photo-documented (and scanned) before the finished Abecedary is delivered to Janet. We are percolating about making a facsimile copy to keep at BZS for posterity and dreaming about a set of Abecedary postcards. And my postal muse is penning a highly annotated index, detailing what each letter stands for (and why), as well as process notes about the various pages. This will become part of Janet’s Abecedary… and perhaps something we can share.

Later this week, we will post the E (is for guess what?) page. Hint: It’s not exactly a page.

Astoundingly beautiful creativity, Bari

Previewing the Abecedary we are giving away

Dear Everyone ~

Last Sunday, we gathered at Bari Zaki Studio to make the pages of The Thing We Are Giving Away… to the winner of the first-ever BZS drawing. This small group of dear friends includes my most frequent & creative collaborators. The amount of time I’ve known them ranges from the last century to the past year. We are all variously connected by our mutual love for paper. 
 
The paper party players, in alphabetical order, were: Alyson (aka my postal muse); Audrey (hand-letterer, photographer, social media maven, and Alyson’s niece); Bari/me (proprietress, hostess, bookbinder); Emmy (artist and Nimble Shop Assistant emerita); Janet (in-house illustrator and watercolourist);  Ruby (my current Nimble Shop Assistant extraordinaire); Tammy (master winder of waxed thread, co-stitcher, postage assorter & assembler), Wendy (hand-marbling marvel), and Zak (my beloved). The Thing has been given a proper name: An Abecedary of Things to Do With Paper & Things Paper Can Do (Abecedary for short). Our 50-some pages are approaching completion. Assembly—which is to say binding—will follow.
 
As an amuse-book, here is the title page by Ruby. She is also illustrating three other pages, and collaborating with Tammy on two more. For this page, she has hand-lettered everything with a fineliner and tinted with colour pencil—her choice, Lyra Colour Giants, natch!

The drawing is nigh! Sixty-some postcards were received, too numerous (and fabulous) to put in a hat, so we’ve upgraded to a Cambridge Imprint totebag. Will, our convivial & dependable mail carrier, will be doing the drawing early-ish next week, and we will announce instantly.

As an appetizer, here is the A spread, on which an accordion is affixed. One of the panels features azaleas markered by Emmy; another panel features Ruby’s montage of abstract images in colour pencil. Audrey drew an absolutely appropriate initial A. I folded the 5-panel accordion from Hahnemühle Bugra, with perfectly pleasing proportions of 3¾" x 5½".

As you may have gathered, some pages are works in progress: some are already in hand, some are being mailed back to me as I type, and some I’m still working on myself. Soon I will begin binding them all into a unifying structure. Soon there will be much more to report—including the winner of the Abecedary!
 
Absolutely brimming continuously, Bari
 
PS:
As to who is who around the center table, from left to right: Ruby, Me, Alyson, Janet, Wendy, Zak (sitting in for Tammy), Emmy. Audrey is taking the group photo—she will make an appearance in an upcoming post!

Élan, éclat, Écluse

Dear Everyone ~

I am deliriously delighted to herald the arrival of the two newest handmade papers by Atelier Écluse (AÉ). From the moment this fresh shipment arrived, it was all I could do not to be driven to distraction… and to my bone folder: to feel the texture, to fold the bookweight sheets into signatures, to begin making, yes… a buttonhole-stitch book. As I began to decant the box, Ruby immediately exclaimed, “Ooooh, those would make a lovely envelope!” So, that is exactly what I did next. Well, I had to make several, as you can will see momentarily. Then, I made another buttonhole-stitch book with the envelopes stitched in, as seen below. The ensemble, to me, is breathtaking.

The same lovely colour & pattern that graces AÉ’s ochre & ecru sketchbooks is now available in flat sheets. Like their blue & white counterparts, they also measure 11" x 15", with the actual pattern being 10" x 14". They are equally divine to score, fold, and glue. 

 The bookweight papers (100 gsm) are available in four earthy hues: Tan, Natural White, Terra Cotta, and Light Denim. They measure 18" x 24" and you can fold them into signatures measuring 3" x 4¾", or 4¾" x 6", or 6" x 9". Each fold is so smooth, you needn’t even think about grain direction! The dramatic deckled edges look so dressy and divine.

Speaking of luscious paper, I’m doubly delighted to announce that Bundles of Stationery Joy à la Japonaiserie are back in stock! A binder’s dozen to be exact, 13 bundles each swaddled in a unique vintage Japanese paper from our archives. As with the original batch, mostly from the last century, all from Aiko’s. There is only one of each pattern, so, as we have said previously, you might want to spring into action if you have favourites.

Each bundle contains a range of notecards and postcards from European designers and artists: James Winrow, Marimekko, Mary Feddon, Cambridge Imprint, Fabriano Medioevalis, and Hahnemühle Bugra. Envelope accompaniments include tissue-lined Pineider Monarch-y envelopes, an envelope hand-folded by me, and a vintage airmail envelope.

Sophie Harding’s incredible square notecards have been restocked, plus five new designs. Their charming names are: A Bowl of Cherries, (ABC), Last of the Summer Fruits, Marigolds, Sailing into Mousehole, and Shells & Ceramic Fragments. If you would fancy having one of all fourteen designs (a quatorzaine)—allowing you to send/present one very lucky someone with a different card every day for a full fortnight—be our best-addressed guest (and receive the 14th card free).

About a Bookful walkabout

Dear Everyone ~

Bookful of Wordless Stories, my 13th (our Binders Dozenth) Bookful collaboration with Cat Bennett, begins Saturday, May 18—amid mid-spring and early summer, a fine time for fine walks.

The structure students will make to illustrate their wordless stories is a single-signature booklet with decorative stitching and a trio of fab details: a window on the front cover, a triangular pocket inside the back cover, and a companion hand-folded envelope for presenting & protecting your booklet. Speaking of trios, the kit for this workshop includes materials to make three booklets, with three different covers and three complementary envelopes. Students will make one ensemble (booklet + hand-folded envelope) in the first week’s workshop, and the second & third ensembles thereafter with the recording for reference (and company!).

This past week at the BZS palette palace, Ruby & I were in a flurry of measuring, trimming, counting, thread winding, exquisite scrap assembling, and collating the colourful sets of Canson Mi-Teints papers for each kit. Several students have ordered both palettes, Delaunay and Bloomsbury. This means twelve different colours for mixing, matching & musing. It’s chromatically dramatic.

By the end of this week, all the kits will be dispatched to their destinations from coast to coast to beyond, and for in-shop pick up. You can read more about the kits in colourful detail in the shop listing here!

 Cat loves to walk in the dawniest hours of the morning. She rarely takes a sketchbook with her, but takes mental notes in her mind’s eye of the scenery, flora, and people. Once back in her studio she puts pen (or brush) to paper. I asked her to reflect a bit about this creative habit of hers and she shared  …

“ In creating a wordless story, we can capture our impressions of a moment in time in visual images which we can play with in fanciful ways. With the arrival of spring, I’m walking outside so much more and noticing the arrival of birds, blossoms and people too. Everything appears so vivid in spring and our books are records of what we see and feel. ”

“ Everything can spark ideas for images and, with three books, we can focus on three themes. After I’m out and about, I often make pen drawings in my sketchbook. I do these from memory and sometimes add color with markers or colored pencils. After I find some good ideas, I’m ready to work on my book. In our books we can also explore various ways of making images which bring our stories vividly to life. ”

If you would like to join us for Bookful, spring into action. There is still time to ship your kit(s). Cat & I like to emphasize, especially if you are a Bookful newcomer, that absolutely no drawing, painting, collaging, or bookbinding experience is necessary. The workshop pace is calm, and your walking pace can be a saunter (You can be a jaunter.) or a meander or a wander full of wonder. (And you will have complete videos to watch and rewatch—all 12 hours-ful!)

Bookful of Wordless Stories
 
Springing along, Bari

Appetizing & zesty postcards on approach

Dear Everyone ~

Postcard entries for the Bari Zaki Studio First Ever Epistolary Drawing (BZSFEED) continue to arrive from near and far. I have received entries from sixteen states, from northeast to southwest & northwest to southeast. Postage ranges from current to vintage, with the occasional blend. Some cards are overfranked, some sport hand-cancellations, some are uncancelled. The growing stack is a fabulous & fabulously eclectic mix of mediums and materials.

Our friend Carl Herrman has now sent in five postcards (seen above). As we’ve said, the more the verrier. Carl’s name for his rubber-stamping artistic mail endeavors is the Visual Lunacy Society, and his postcards are visually wild & loonily luxe. We have a few vaguely related background details about Carl via our postal muse, who actually met him at a postal design conference in Newport Beach almost thirty years ago. Carl is a lifelong surfer, and one of the thrills of his long tenure as an art director for the USPS was designing the 29¢ Duke Kahanamoku stamp. He comments, “ The First Day ceremony included a luau for hundreds with Don Ho performing. ” Carl also designed the Spiders & Insects of 1999, which was the most popular stamp issue of the year. When we asked him if he had favorites for which he’d been the art director and/or designer, he promptly asked us, “ Like asking which are your favorite children? ”

 At the opposite end of the visual lunacy spectrum, the postcard we’ve received from Frances Reed in Atlanta is more like a little black dress. Her entry is trimmed with red-and-blue piping, bordering both sides of the card. Even so, it’s very narrow, and we are wondering whether Frances could possibly have undertaken to subdivide the washi! You may recognize Frances’s name from our blog post A Morning Glue-torial at the Round Table. 

The deadline for receipt of BZSFEED postcards is Friday, May 10, which is two full mailing weeks hence. Don’t dither—send your card(s) hither!
 
Post haste, Bari
 
PS:
Before I could say Stationery Bundle of Joy à la Japonaiserie, the bundles were sold out! I’ve since received several emails and messages through IG enquiring if I will be offering them again. The answer is Yes! I’ll be announcing them as soon as you can say Stationery Bundle of Joy à la Japonaiserie. 
 
Apropos of which, the email I received from Kristen J. had a heartfelt subject line: Tell me it's not true! And her message began: Hi, I planned on ordering a Bundle of Stationery Joy for a dear friend when I ordered my Bookful of Wordless Stories workshop and see that they are completely sold out!
 
PPS:
And a customer who goes simply by X emailed to say, “ Wow! Japanese bundles gone immediately. ” If X had whined or bemoaned, it could have been a haiku!