Our lovely city of Edinburgh will soon have a new destination for stationery lovers. Something exciting is coming to Edinburgh... We're beyond excited to share that we're opening a brand new stationery shop in this city of writers and creative souls. We’ve got the keys and have started daubing paint on the walls. It’s an exciting time and we want to bring you along for the journey. The inspiration to start Libraries & Archives Paper Company came from weekend wanders in Edinburgh, and feeling that the stationery shop of our dreams didn’t quite exist yet in the city. Shopping for stationery and art materials has always been a part of any destination we’ve travelled to and growing up in Glasgow, I loved visiting the multi-storey stationery mecca that was C.F. Nash on Miller Street. A creative person, leisurely shopping for clothes or toiletries didn’t interest me in the least, but a stationery shop seemed bursting with creative potential on every shelf. Our favourite stationery shops each have a special personality and reflection of the place they belong to, whether in Florence, Milan, New York, Madrid, Nice, Paris, Tokyo or Kyoto, to mention only a few. The special stories behind them, their unique selections and displays were always something that stuck in our minds long after we arrived home. This lovely fragment of creative Herbarium making was from one of our workshops in the studio. A corner of our studio during a pop-up shop weekend in 2023, featuring the infamous ‘ink fountain’! Finally going live online during a pandemic, and the aftermath, was something that we were frankly lucky to weather, but the appetite for stationery never seemed to wane, and it was a joy and a privilege to deliver so many parcels all over the world to keep our stationery-loving customers supplied through lockdown and beyond. Holding pop-up shops, and appearing at some of the loveliest markets, hosting events and visitors in our studio, this was when the stationery lovers of Edinburgh- and from places as far flung as Hawaii, Australia, China and Vietnam - came with their journals and enthusiasm, pen collections and favourite ink samples, stickers to swap and stories to share. The stories grew way beyond the stationery and into a special kind of community. An early pop-up where visitors were always keen to try out inks and pens in person. Our 3rd Birthday cake from our celebratory pop-up, featuring edible paper, edible ink and edible pen! Making Kaweco fountain pens during another pop-up weekend. And through our many pop-up shops, so many of you asked us when we might be opening a shop. The fact is that opening a physical location in Edinburgh is no mean feat, and anyone who has done this, from solo manicurist to bustling cafe, deserves all our admiration. It’s an expensive city and as I knew from previous jobs, a uniquely challenging one for independent businesses. But our journey to this new little jewel-box of a shop in Marchmont started to grow sometime then, and blossomed every time we had a pop-up shop or event, when we would realise that community and connection was a big part of what we loved about this business. And the search began to find the perfect space for a little piece of stationery heaven in Edinburgh. Once we’d committed to the vision, the ideas for what it could be started to flow, and our habits of drawing and writing by hand started to come in handy to capture the most fleeting and random whisps of inspiration - we have hand-drawn pictures of what we wanted it to look like and we’ve embedded many of our values as a business into the design of the shop - using pre-owned furniture and sustainable materials everywhere, enlisting craftsmen and building on the city’s strong and beautiful heritage. Our stationery geekery extends deeply into Edinburgh’s own history of paper, ink and pens, and to the fascinating heritage of long-standing stationery companies around the world that still send wonderful goods to our shelves. We’ve used our favourite pens to write this plan into being, and freshly sharpened Japanese pencils, and the gorgeous art materials of Wallace Seymour to (very amateurishly) sketch our ideas, and design not just a shop, but a community space, that can host all kinds of gatherings, like in our erstwhile studio (RIP). Fountain pen gatherings, journal cafe’s summer travel journaling themed popups and herbarium workshops to name just a few. Written into the plans are gatherings around tables to the sounds of industrious writing, sketching, pasting, cutting and making. Our notes and sketches also contain the most cryptic of scribbles that would only ever make sense to us, thankfully the people helping us to bring this shop vision are all very patient and understanding. It helps that they also love stationery and we wouldn’t have it any other way. A huge thank you is due to our lovely customers, pop-up visitors, fabulous suppliers, encouragers, collaborators, friends and neighbours - it’s no exaggeration to say that you’ve helped build this new shop brick by brick and if we were to try to dedicate a brick in our lovely exposed brick wall to each and every one of you, we’d not have enough bricks! Every little thing in our shop will be designed for you, for the stationery lovers, your appreciation of beauty and tactility, your love for heritage stationery brands and quality goods that are a joy to use. Everything you love about Libraries & Archives Paper Company in one place. Think beautiful notebooks, fountain pens, writing papers, desk essentials, thoughtful gifts, and all the little things that make putting pen to paper so special. We'll have more news soon about when we're opening our doors and some very exciting events and collaborations we have planned. Follow along as we share sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes updates, and all the details over the coming weeks. _Visit Instagram to see our original announcement post._ _Click Images Below To Browse Our Latest Arrivals_

Soon, I’m going to issue a challenge. The “Don’t Buy Shit” Challenge. I’ll write more about that tomorrow, but for now you need to understand what has prompted that challenge. I’ve bought “some” fountain pens. I’ve talked about this new hobby of mine before and I’ve mentioned it several times on the podcast, but it’s worse than I want to admit. I now have at least two dozen fountain pens. Now, none of these were overly expensive, at least when you learn that some pens can cost thousands of dollars, but they are not 10 cent Bics either.

A Dozen Questions for People Who Are Particular About Pens