Hello all, I am in the middle of prepping my stationary for the game. Any history buffs know about Regency stationary? All I could find was that lightly colored and scented paper was fashionable but that often, plain white paper of the best quality was what was preferred. I wanna diy some fancyyy stationary. Any sources? Found a lot of Regency letters but no real examples of stationary beyond monograms?
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So, I don’t know what tricks Athena figured out to apply a separate seal to a letter by warming the back first. My experiments failed.
But! I discovered that a little wax paper under the top flap of an unlicked/unsealed envelope allowed me to make the seal impression but still be openable by Athena.
today I did the same for folded letters using some crappy wax I had laying around. Here are the videos.
basically this. (30 second video)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HNn3yZMmnaLPIWMEeodOysJh9GPL95SI/view?usp=drivesdk
also this (1 minute of watching me remove the wax paper.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MIvDvMPNV87tqThQz68vnq8ajZYGQcSh/view?usp=drivesdk
*Athena emerges from the printing press wiping sweat and ink off her brow*
Hello my friends!
Yes please compose your letters to each other with the decorative degree you wish to use. Whatever from they arrive to me in, after I read and scan them, I will then place them in a standard mailing envelope from a giant box I have here, because in order to save on postage costs, I am printing off postage and mailing labels, which is not very lovely. You do not need to provide that part, just the getting to our P.O. Box H in Arlington, MA 02476. I will handle it getting to it's intended from there, including the ugly outer envelope to protect whatever lovelies you have inside from the elements of modern travel.
Hopefully the joy comes in from pealing away this unattractive modern outer shell to find transportive magic within!
Update: I was wrong...skip to Athena's comments below. Hey all. I actually got some clarification from @Athena Peters @Athena Peters ... If I understood correctly... what's happening is that we send our letters in an envelope addressed to the PO Box, they open read and scan them, then seal them up, add postage and send them on to the player. They are not putting them into a separate envelope to pass on. So all our efforts for envelope addressing will only work if you're enclosing another external envelope for them to address to the IRL recipient.
I'm having yet another existential crisis now. I was planning to authentically fold and use the fold margins like Austen did (but never ever cross-hatch)... but that was when I thought we were getting once-a-month bulk packages with our letters. Now that I know they're being sent out as they come in... I'm not so sure...
Yeah, I’m going for “feels right” not “historically accurate”
Let me just say on behalf of the anachronism crew: y'all are getting envelopes. Not because I feel passionately about them, but because they seem the logical means of dividing a packet of letters sent to Plot Central by their intended recipients, no matter how many pages or how roughly it's handled in transit.
Mary Blankeney-Lennox, the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, invented and sold the patents of her fabulous sheening, shading, and shimmering inks some 20 years ago.
(i, the player, have fallen in love with all things fountain pens and created a brilliant mother who invented the inks I plan using. I say, go nuts!)
Things from "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew":
- In general paper was expensive, so it was used as a precious commodity. There was even a national paper tax (repealed in 1861).
- Postage was billed by the mile (except for MPs), paid by the recipient. And apparently any inclusions (like a second sheet of paper) cost extra- one reason for "crossing" in letter-writing and for using abbreviations.
- Envelopes weren't in use until the 1840s, so the exterior of the final page of the letter was used (after folding the letter) and sealed with a wafer of gum and flour, or with sealing wax (red wax for business, black wax for mourning, and all other colors used for social correspondence).
Reading between the lines, I'd say Regency stationery would be unmarked paper. However, this is an alternate history- anything in the timeline until now could've changed the tax or the availability of paper. Perhaps the current Prince Regent is rumored to only write on paper that has his monogram at the top, or some fashionable salon maven has the charmingly eccentric habit of writing letters on the back of her watercolors, and the populace is mad for it?