Desk note
The furnace and a sharper line.
· the counter
The heat on this block runs dry. By the first real cold week of January, paper that felt soft in October ticks when you flex a corner. The tick is the sheet giving up moisture to the room. It is not the cotton failing, and it is not a reason to oil anything. Ink reports the change before a pencil does, if you are paying attention to the edge of the stroke rather than to the color in the bottle.
We keep one 50 ml bottle of black dye on the sample tray through the winter, the same bottle, so the comparison is honest. In early October, on 104 gsm cotton that had lived in the drawer at ordinary humidity, the stroke had a slight softness at the edge. Not a feather. A softness. On 7 January, same bottle, same nib, a fresh sheet from the same drawer, the edge was harder and the line looked darker, because it was narrower. Less of it had sunk sideways into the fiber. The customer had come in to replace the ink. He did not need a new bottle. He needed to know that his apartment, like the shop, had been heated hard since the last time he wrote a full page.
The 118 gsm gelatin sheet shows this less. Tub sizing already holds a dye line tight, so the winter change is a small one: a slightly drier feel under the nib, a little more feedback, not a new color. Iron gall on unbuffered cotton darkens on its own schedule after it hits the page. Dry air can make that darkening look quicker at the edges, where the film is thin. If you judge an iron-gall bottle by a stroke that is ten seconds old, in January, you will think it is weaker than it will be in an hour. Wait. Then decide.
Pigment black barely changes its edge in a dry room, which makes it a poor witness. People switch to it in winter and announce that “the paper settled.” The paper did settle. The pigment was never going to show it. If the goal is a waterproof line, use the pigment and test it on a scrap of the sheet you are buying. If the goal is to understand why last month’s dye looks different, stay with the dye and change one thing at a time.
Graphite, for what it is worth, tells the same dryness from the other direction. The tooth of the cotton tightens. A 2B that laid down a quiet gray in October scratches and looks lighter, because the point rides the tops of the fibers instead of seating in them. The temptation is to buy a softer pencil. A sharp HB will often put down more darkness than a blunt 2B. We sharpen one pencil at the counter with a blade, sweep the cedar, and let the person write a line before they change grades. Pressure is the other half. Sized cotton is not newsprint. You do not need to engrave it. A long point on a B or a 2B snaps if you do.
What we will not do in a dry week is mist the paper, or suggest a damp box, or leave a quire near the door in the hope that Clinton’s cold air will “put the moisture back.” Cold air from that door in January is dry air. The July shop is the humid one; the note for that season is west light. A sheet you want flat and stable should go home wrapped, then sit in the room where it will be used until it matches that room. Writing on it in the shop and then writing on it again in a different humidity is how a page gains two kinds of line and starts an argument with the bottle.
A bottle that actually froze is a different case. Sweat on the glass, slush in the core, cap left on: that note is A cap that stays on. Do not use the furnace story to explain a pale, watery stroke from a bottle that spent the night in the car. Pale is water. Sharp is a dry sheet. They are both common here in January, and they are not the same fault.
Grades on the tray are on the pencil page. The sheets are on the cotton page.