Home > Social Butterfly > Archives > 2007 > November > 25 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USDear 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)
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Me
November 27, 2007 11:57 AM | Link to this
“C” lololol
By Mom
November 27, 2007 12:17 PM | Link to this
Each year I write my daughter a Christmas letter telling her how proud I am of her, how much I love her and some of her accomplishments throughout the year. I hope these letters will be cherished as she grows older and when I am gone. She is now 14 and all the letters are in a Christmas scrapbook I keep for her.
It’s a wonderful tradition.
By SM
November 27, 2007 12:28 PM | Link to this
Who has the time to write letters? Why waste the postage? With options like texting, email, and live chats, you write a letter because you’re bored. Get a job or volunteer and put away the useless stationery and save a tree!
By Atlanta Pearl Girl
November 27, 2007 12:29 PM | Link to this
Oh my…… the art of sending a letter is definately a thing of the past it seems……. However…I always take the time to write (not email) a thank you note to a host or for a gift or just to say Hi.
The fact that someone takes the time to sit down and express themselves through penmanship is a gift of sorts.
I hand write my envelopes for Christmas Cards…and every invitation I send out for a party…it’s hand written usually with a small note to say Hi as well.
I have many boxes of Crane staionary on my shelves in my office. I still love to stand in front of the boxes and pick one that speaks to me.
To the Art of the Hand Written Letter! I salute thee! To Crane & Co…. your dragonfly stationary will always be my favorite. You will be missed. ::::sniff sniff::::::
Atlanta Pearl Girl
By Atlanta Pearl Girl
November 27, 2007 12:31 PM | Link to this
Oh my…… the art of sending a letter is definately a thing of the past it seems……. However…I always take the time to write (not email) a thank you note to a host or for a gift or just to say Hi.
The fact that someone takes the time to sit down and express themselves through penmanship is a gift of sorts.
I hand write my envelopes for Christmas Cards…and every invitation I send out for a party…it’s hand written usually with a small note to say Hi as well.
I have many boxes of Crane staionary on my shelves in my office. I still love to stand in front of the boxes and pick one that speaks to me.
To the Art of the Hand Written Letter! I salute thee! To Crane & Co…. your dragonfly stationary will always be my favorite. You will be missed. ::::sniff sniff::::::
Atlanta Pearl Girl
By SAHM
November 27, 2007 1:11 PM | Link to this
Many years ago as a teenager, I wrote a letter to my grandfather after my grandmother died telling him how sorry I was to lose her and how much I still needed him. Upon his death four years later the letter was found under the table pad in the dining room with a note by him on the envelope stating “save this”. I like to believe he saved it because it was special to him.
In the last few years near the end of the school years I’ve written to two school principals, the local school board member, and the superintendent of schools about 3 teachers. The teachers did outstanding jobs and I praised their efforts and abilities, as well as gave details of their successes with my children. It took a while for the letters to filter down to the teachers and each was appreciative of the recognition.
By huh?
November 27, 2007 1:39 PM | Link to this
This has got to be the dumbest blog I’ve ever read on this site.
Why does atlanta need a “social butterfly” reporter? Can someone point out the newsworthy part of this???
I’m sorry…I guess I just don’t get it….
By Griffin Girl
November 27, 2007 1:52 PM | Link to this
Although I’ve received wonderful letters from those closest to me, there are so many and they are all meaningful. One letter that came from someone outside my immediate family is memorable. I enjoyed riding horses as a girl, and occasionally showed, but I was not remotely close to being a champion. Others were flashier, prettier, with better form and more beautiful horses. I was mostly involved in foxhunting, a grimy, sometimes ugly sport that was not for those concerned about looks or form. Still, I plodded away at horse shows, hoping to eventully bring home something. When I was around 14 or 15, a local club held a hunter trial, which was more of a contest for actual working horses and riders, I won everything. The mother of a friend, an elegant, refined southern lady who had seen many of my horse shows, wrote me a letter congratulating me, telling me how proud she was of me, and that she considered me a true winner, for having stuck in there in the face of defeat after defeat. I don’t know what hapened to that letter, but I wish I still had it. It would have been a good thing to read over the past year and a half while I was unsuccessfully looking for a job in my very competitive profession. Recently I landed the job of my dreams. Miss Gay would be proud of me. Maybe I should call her…
By sloan
November 27, 2007 5:25 PM | Link to this
Although now that I am the mother of two young sons and work from home as a freelance writer, I have far less time for the kind of correspondence I once enjoyed with friends who lived afar. Now we jot off quick e-mails that have far less character and meaning than the lengthy letters we once shared. I miss the feeling of opening my mailbox to find a letter on exquisite stationery from a dear friend.
I do still make time for thank you notes, notes of encouragement, and congratulatory notes to friends and family when something good happens to them.
I also still love giving fine stationery as a gift and my favorite gift given to my son when he turned one was a set of personalized thank you notes and matching calling cards. I plan to order some for my younger son who is also about to turn one.
By S. Williams
November 27, 2007 8:32 PM | Link to this
My most memorable letter was when I was in elementary school. A boy sent passed it to a friend to give to me. It went something like this….
” I like you. Do you like me? Check one []Yes []No []maybe so
Love, Your admirer”
How was I suppose to know whether or not I liked him if he didn’t disclose who he was?
By Michael
November 28, 2007 3:57 AM | Link to this
My most memorable letter was from a sranger who did not have enough change to buy a subway token in N.Y.(1964) I gave he man a token, later he asked for my address. Two weeks later I recieved a letter from the stranger thanking me for being kind to a White man in a bigoted world. I was seventeen, he was about 30 something.
By Mike
November 28, 2007 1:42 PM | Link to this
It’s about time to start writing Christmas cards - I’ve used Crane cards for years, engraved with my address on the back flap (a style about which the Postal Service has allegedly been unhappy for decades).
Mark Twain said he could survive two weeks on a compliment - I feel the same way about hand-written thank you notes. And because I know how much I like to receive them, I make sure I always send them. I also like to write short notes to older relatives and people I don’t see very often.
Crane’s store might be gone from Lenox, but I can definitely recommend a Buckhead stationer that’s been selling Crane products and many other interesting papers since 1974…