BLOTTERS
I had spilled bit of coloring on the desk! I needed a blotter, and said so.
My fellow worker, young and innocent, in the ways of office routine, looked puzzled and quickly replied: "What you need is a paper towel!" She turned away and promptly returned with several paper towels and hurriedly wiped way the stains.
"There!" She said proudly. "Like new! You didn't hurt a thing. It won't show at all." She glossed over the area with a clean towel and held it up as to reassure me.
I had no idea she, and most of the other young workers in the area, would not know what I had meant when I demanded a "blotter."
I, suddenly, realized they were gone! Blotters no longer exist in offices anywhere today.
Not too ago the blotter was an essential part of the office setup, along with rubber bands and thunb tacks. We used pen and ink for many office jobs before typewriters and, then, ball point pens came into style. The blotter was usually about the size of a dollar bill - which was a tad larger than than today, as well. Most would have been, oh perhaps 8-1/2 by 4 inches, as I recall, They were mainly made of a thin sheet of very absorbant paper covered with a slicker sheet on which advertisements were printed. Most town had small print shop which specialzed is such advertising, match book covers, calanders, key chain tags of heavy cardboard and a stock of signs for utility purposes.
I have seen the working side of some blotters take on a design of reversed writing in blue, red and black which formed a pattern such as Jackson Pollock, the painter, might well have been proud, But the use of the blotter went out of existence with Penmanship, I suppose. The pencil, for some reson, was always there and it has been vastly improved butthe fact that its work could be so easily erased and edited made it useless in keeping company books and other records.
Occasionally,the stained blotter would turn us as clue in detective stories. The slueth could hold the used blotter up before a mirror and present a written confession from the vile crimial..
There must be, somewhere, a museum of blotter designs. They had other not-intended uses, as I remember. I have used them as bookmarks and know of others who have done so. Some of those must be available today and treated as curiousities more and more as the yers go by.
A.L.M. December 30, 2003 [c433wds]
