This Writer’s Life

Restoring Your Writing, Lesson Three: The Ornamental Must Be Structural

Don’t judge yourself or others for trying on a style

As I work to restore this antique writing slope — or, at least, to refurbish it for future use — I am learning about craft, and these are lessons that apply to the craft of writing.

I had mentioned in a prior post that the entire inside of the writing box, including all its dividers, was covered in a “decorative” brown mottled paper that was anything but decorative. After over a hundred years of age and wear and spills and splits in the wood and exposure to sun, the paper was decidedly unattractive. But its dull color scheme of browns and tans made me wonder how anyone in 1900 or so would have considered it attractive in the first place.

The back of a skiver board. You may be able to notice a slight tear in the paper along the right-hand side of the board, where the inch-wide strip running across the bottom edge of the board has begun to separate. Photo by author.

As I continued to dissolve and peel the paper off of each part of the box’s interior divider, exposing the carelessly milled pine pieces underneath, I began to understand why the paper must have seemed attractive: it invoked an image of richly burnished age when this cheaply-made writing box was still new. The dull, mottled paper was meant to imitate the decorative flyleaves of calf-bound volumes arrayed on the shelves of a cozy library, a luxurious setting that whoever bought this writing box must…