Est. 2014 · Aspley, QLD
Long-form writing from the desk, arranged newest first. Every piece is original, written in Australian English, and built to be useful at the bench rather than merely admired.
Australian scene · 1 June 2025
Aspley was one door. The rest of the country still has counters, museum shops, bindery suppliers and the newsagency that surprises you. How to read a room before you buy.
Analog life · 8 April 2025
Schools argue about joined letters while adults buy fountain pens to remember they have a hand. A practical account of writing as a physical skill in Australia.
Travel journals · 5 March 2025
Distances are long, gloveboxes are ovens, and a journal that cannot be written in at a roadhouse is a decoration. Field notes from a shop that sold the ultimate travel journal.
Paper · 11 February 2025
The mills receded, the imported pads arrived, and a local sheet became something you hunt for. A reader's map of paper that is still made, finished or meaningfully finished here.
Paper · 22 January 2025
The phrase is a marketing kindness until you test for feather, bleed, show-through and dry time. A shop-floor definition, written for Australian pads and Australian humidity.
Journals · 3 December 2024
A full notebook is not always a finished object. Sometimes it wants a new cover, a new stitch, or a decent burial in a tin. A bindery-minded guide for people who are not binders.
Inks · 7 November 2024
Three ways ink can be more than a flat colour, and three ways a feed can become a regret. A practical guide for Australian paper and Australian patience.
Inks · 16 October 2024
A colour is not a colour until it dries on the page you actually use, in the humidity you actually have. Here is a pairing method that does not require a laboratory.
Inks · 5 September 2024
A bottle is happier in a dark cupboard than on a sunny desk. Here is how to keep ink alive through an Australian summer, a suitcase, and the last centimetre in the glass.
Fountain pens · 11 August 2024
Pilot is the brand we could put in a beginner’s hand and in a collector’s, without changing the sentence about feedback, cartridges and service. Here is the family as it actually arrives here.
Fountain pens · 3 July 2024
A clear piston you could actually afford made ink visible, capacity ordinary, and maintenance a conversation. It also taught a generation about cracks, grease and patience.
Fountain pens · 18 June 2024
Heat, salt air and a January glovebox will teach you more about feeds than any forum. This is the maintenance we used to write on the back of an Aspley receipt.
Fountain pens · 9 May 2024
Cartridge, converter, piston, vacuum and eyedropper are just ways of getting ink from a bottle into a feed. Here is how they behave in Australian heat, and which ones we trusted on the counter.
Fountain pens · 2 April 2024
Nib sizes are not international, Japanese fines are not European fines, and a stub is not a calligraphy toy. Here is how to read the stamp on the nib in an Australian shop.
Fountain pens · 12 March 2024
A first fountain pen should survive a humid bag, a supermarket refill run, and the particular impatience of someone who still has to write a form. Here is how we used to sell them from Aspley.
Journals · 20 February 2024
Two notebooks that look like the same job and are not. One is a system with a contents page. The other is paper that wants a fountain pen. Here is how we used to choose for people.
Australian scene · 10 March 2021
From a 2014 shipping note about Midori refills at letter rates to a prestige Pilot tile and an Aspley door — the house history, reconstructed from the Wayback Machine.
Australian scene · 16 September 2020
Shop 3, 1355 Gympie Road, northside hours, and a counter that sold Traveler's as if it were a local fact. A portrait of the room the website was always pointing at.
Analog life · 20 November 2019
A pen is a good gift until it is the wrong nib, and a notebook is a good gift until it is a journal the recipient is afraid to spoil. How we used to wrap the ones that worked.
Travel journals · 1 March 2019
Bellroy on the old homepage meant a pouch that made everyday objects look intentional. A writing kit is the same idea, with fewer zippers and a stricter list.
Journals · 8 January 2019
January is when our year starts, Monday is not always Monday, and a diary printed for the northern hemisphere will waste your first week. How to buy a dated book that matches this country.
Analog life · 14 August 2018
The old homepage led with a quality notebook and a slogan. The slogan aged. The notebook did not. A case for analog attention that does not require you to throw the phone in the river.
Journals · 14 August 2018
A small stapled book in a back pocket will teach you more about attention than a leather system you leave at home. How to keep a pocket notebook alive in Australian work clothes.
Travel journals · 14 August 2018
Stamptitude pebbles sat in our new arrivals between TWSBI and Leuchtturm. A seal is not a gimmick if a letter still has to travel Australia Post.
Journals · 1 February 2018
A leather cover, a few refills, and the discipline not to carry an entire stationer on a rubber band. How we used to build travel journals at the Aspley counter.
Analog life · 1 October 2014
In 2014 we unpacked 33 Books from the United States — cigar, beer, wine — and learned that a prompt on a page is a technology. How to steal that idea without the original book.
Inks · 17 July 2014
The bottles we waited on in 2014 were named for weather and water. They still are. Here is how those colours behave on Australian paper, and why the cone in the base is not a gimmick.
Paper · 17 July 2014
In 2014 we were awaiting the arrival of Tomoe River. The wait was about a sheet so thin it felt like arrogance until you wrote on it. Here is how to live with that arrogance in Australia.