Home > Social Butterfly > Archives > 2007 > November > 25
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Dear Crane’s…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s been two years, and I’m still heartbroken.
I’m talking about the departure of the Crane & Co. stationery store, which pulled up its stakes at Lenox Square. The company apparently had decided to retool its retail strategy, so Cranes’ elegant papers are now available through its Web site, www.crane.com, and at other purveyors of fine stationery.
But it’s not the same.
I still miss going into that exquisite, wood-paneled store and poring over fonts and colors. Crane’s mailed the dies used to make my engraved notes and cards just before closing, but I haven’t had the heart to take them to another shop yet. I need to, though. My stock’s about depleted.
Hopefully, by the time “National Letter Writing Day” gets here on Dec. 7, I will have figured something out.
In the meantime: what’s the most memorable letter you’ve received or written? Was it a holiday card, a love letter, a birthday greeting from a child? Send me an engraved email and tell me all about it.
By the way, here’s the lamentation I wrote when Crane’s closed. It was published in the AJC’s Living section on Dec. 11, 2005, and I still hear from readers about it from time to time.
Fond farewell to stationery store
JENNIFER BRETT / Staff jbrett@ajc.com
Dear Crane & Co.,
The moment I opened the mailbox, I knew you were leaving. Your postcard was bright - almost garish - and sent in bulk, like a flier for a mattress store. I winced at the word “clearance, ” then at the news.
The store at Lenox - which sells items like boxed notecards, wedding invitations, fine pens and etiquette books - is closing at the end of the year.
Your corporate office in Dalton, Mass., didn’t want to say much, only that the store’s lease was up and the company couldn’t come to new terms with its landlord. For now, the closest store will be in Charlotte. In this diverse and booming town, where malls have valet parking and people camp out to greet a new furniture store, one small stationery shop is a tiny drop in a teeming retail bucket.
Still, it’s a shame to see you go. Your company, founded in 1801 when Zenas Crane and two partners asked ladies for old rags to make paper with, is unlike other stationery stores. It is a beacon of propriety in a coarsening society, a standardbearer for correct behavior. One I’m sorry to see leave a town that could use a refresher course in decorum from time to time.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. Each generation makes communication a little faster, but even the earliest improvements seemed to chip away at civility.
“Mrs. Bell, my children and grandchildren join me in kind remembrances to you and yours, ” is how Alexander Graham Bell concluded a tender note to Thomas A. Watson on Feb. 3, 1905.
You’ll recall that during their famous first telephone conversation, Bell was a bit more brusque: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!” I love a cute e-vite as much as anyone, but the most meaningful correspondence has always been handwritten. (Paul’s text message to the Ephesians? It just doesn’t sound right.)
I don’t mean to imply that good stationery is for snobs. The point of sending a note on crested letterhead is not to club your friends over the head and shout, “I know which fork to use!” It’s to make them feel special, and let them know that you cared enough about them to sit down and write a warm and genuine greeting.
When some of our dearest friends learned they were expecting, I sent a note on an informal - a folded card that, despite the name, is actually quite formal - telling them what wonderful parents they would be. When their daughter turned 1, I took over a small gift with our calling card tucked under the ribbon.
After dinner parties or luncheons, I send a thank-you on a monogrammed card within a day or two.
People always seem to appreciate it, and I’ve spotted my letters on friends’ refrigerators months, even years, after they were sent. Before assembling a stationery wardrobe for my husband and myself - socially, I’m Mrs. Charles Taylor Gay -I consulted the Crane’s Blue Book of Stationery and my favorite etiquette book, Emily Postcirca 1945.
(There’s an entire chapter dedicated to “Visiting Cards and Their Uses.” Another chapter laments “The Vanished Chaperon and Other Lost Conventions.”)
Decent stationery is available at a number of stores, but Crane, with its time-honored process of making paper with cotton fibers instead of wood, was my destination. “We at Crane believe there is no substitute for true engraving, ” your Web site says. So do I.
Buying stationery at Crane’s has been a joy. Assistant manager Moore, a master of the dying art of customer service, helped me almost every time I came in. On one visit I pored over fonts and colors for nearly an hour before deciding on Doric in navy blue with a houndstooth liner for my husband’s notecards.
Another time, I flipped back and forth, back and forth, trying to decide between a matte and glossy finish for the liner of my Christmas cards. I labored over a color for my monogram, settling on claret.
Moore, who has a refined, courtly manner about him, was never impatient. And he would utter a discreet word of triumph each time I made up my mind.
“Excellent, ” he’d say softly, like a sommelier who’d just guided a diner toward a nice glass of wine.
Crane’s, I love that you honor your heritage with posters showing old photos and the history of your company. In a town known for bulldozing its past, and in an age that prizes the immediate - the T-Mobile booth outside your doors does a brisk business - a visit to your store or Web site is a nice respite.
Old photos and timelines tell visitors how Henry Craneemigrated from England to Dorchester, Mass., in 1648. How his great-grandson, Stephen Crane, got the family into papermaking and sold paper for currency to Paul Revere for the Colonies’ first paper money.
How Crane’s innovations over the years produced thin paper for Bibles and thick paper for diplomas.
I learned that the first company-owned store opened in 1994 in Boston, with others following, including the one here. Eleven years is nothing for a company that began more than 200 years ago, and for that reason I’m hopeful Crane’s may open another store here, or at least somewhere a little closer than Charlotte.
If you do, I hope you’ll let me know. On proper paper, please. Yours truly,
Mrs. Charles T. Gay (Jennifer)
