A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES
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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our fifteenth monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. |
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TLDR Version: Please Check for Personal Belongings, Dreaming, Ted & Joan, 224 Rep. John Lewis Way South, To Every Season |
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Just about every one of the millions of Field Notes Memo Books we have produced has included a space on the inside front cover for the owner to include this information: If found, please contact (blank) Hence there (is/isn’t) a handsome reward waiting. |
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Except for my ever-present Steno, which never, ever leaves my desk, I always fill that section out. Do you? Here’s a story. |
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Chicago artist and screen-printer Jay Ryan was a vendor at our Holiday Market at HQ this past weekend. He recently returned from a trip and after it was too late to do anything about it, he realized he had left his trustworthy and beautifully beat-to-shit “Everyday Inspiration” leather cover, containing his current, working Memo Book (a “Snowy Evening”) in the pocket in front of his seat on the plane from Boston back to Chicago. And the book contained a ton of details and measurements for a big mural project he was working on. Ugh. |
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Jay always fills out that section on the inside cover and adds “$50 if found.” He contacted the airline, posted about it online and hoped for the best. |
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A few days later he received a padded envelope that was mailed to his studio from Irvine, California. Inside was his cover and Memo Book. There was a sticky note attached with an arrow drawn, pointing to the $50 reward note and the words, “Please donate to a local charity. God bless.” I like to think that, just maybe, the person who returned the book was a Field Notes user. Or, if not, maybe after this they’ll become one. Either way, I’m pretty sure they will be careful to fill out that section of the inside front cover. |
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A Dream Project, Literally
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As I mentioned in last month’s Staple Day, “We pay special attention to other small and medium sized brands... In a lot of the collaborative things we have done, we started out as lurkers, and then customers, before we became partners.” |
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When I wrote that I was thinking of East Fork. |
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As lurkers we admired the brand’s open and honest voice and the way they photographed and presented their made-in-the-USA products. |
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We became customers. I mentioned East Fork to someone very close to me and she purchased a few small bowls from their site. On the day they were delivered she placed a second order for an entire set of dinnerware for our home. Consider yourself warned. |
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As partners we had a blast creating the products for this collaboration. We also witnessed a small team pull together in the face of adversity as Hurricane Helene disrupted the lives and businesses in East Fork’s hometown, including their own. That delayed our product launch a bit, but only increased our admiration. |
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So You Know: Our “Dreamers’ Bundles” sold out in six hours on launch day. We put some aside to sell at our Holiday Market and now we have about 70 left. Staple Day readers are first to learn that those are now available on our site. They will make a great gift. As it says on the box, “Follow your dreams. But first, coffee.” |
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As noted in a previous Staple Day, I have started a commonplace book to record quotes, lyrics, poems, and conversations that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries. |
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“Something went wrong, says the empty house.” |
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A line from Ted Kooser’s poem “Abandoned Farmhouse.” Kooser’s plain-spoken style leaves everything in the open. He doesn’t tell us a story, he simply records his observations and we tell it to ourselves. |
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Note: The book Braided Creek is a conversation in poems between Kooser and novelist and poet, Jim Harrison. Kooser had given up on poetry after being diagnosed with cancer and found a way back to it through his correspondence with Harrison. Just beautiful. |
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“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do... on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there.” |
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Note: I love this Paris Review conversation, published ten years after STB. Note that Linda Kuehl, who conducted the interview, died not long after it was was transcribed, leaving Didion to write the introduction herself. |
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Bumping Elbows With Ghosts
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Judging from my Staple Day inbox, folks seem to like the “process stories” about previous editions. So here’s another one you may have missed. |
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America’s most renowned letterpress print shop was founded by the brothers Hatch in 1879 and remains the living heartbeat of classic American poster design and printing craft. Since the early days of our Quarterly Editions, we have known that the road to explore the history of American printing, publishing and design runs directly through Nashville and Hatch Show Print. |
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Hatch is famous for letterpress-printed posters. For 145 years, they’ve found ways to recombine their enormous archive of historic images and type in ways that always seem fresh and vibrant, but also timeless. Hatch makes large posters. We make small notebooks. Here’s how we worked together. |
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We imagined a three-poster public service campaign about effective poster design, which we named Pressing Issues: A Series on Ink, Paper, and Muscle. We wrote some copy and made a couple of really rough sketches and then left it to the crew at Hatch to design and print. And. They. Killed. It. |
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Next, we cut up the three finished posters into covers for our Memo Books. Each poster yielded six covers, and we included one book from each poster in the 3-Packs. As a result of that, and the natural variations in letterpress printing, there’s a ton of variety in the run. |
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BTW: We sent Field Notes co-founder Aaron Draplin to Music City while the Hatch posters were on press. He explored their archives, learned a ton, and for the most part, managed to stay out their way. Check out the film of his visit. |
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This release is helping to raise awareness and funds for a museum. If you’d like to go a step farther, please consider giving to The Rex Brasher Association’s Annual Fund. Thanks. |
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The “Vintage” Edition, our limited release for winter that dropped last week is shipping right now. We revisited some of our favorite materials, details, and production processes to create a brand-new and old-fashioned set of Memo Books. Start (or gift) a year-long subscription with “Vintage” and you, or the lucky gift recipient, will be all set to come along for the ride next year. |
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In a rare spasm of punctuality we already have our Spring and Summer releases for 2025 mapped out. We have a ton of research and design work to do on both of them, but we’re not complaining. To be honest, that’s our favorite part of the process. |
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Sorry I wrote such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one. Happy holidays. |
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* Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together. |
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