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Since the very beginning we have been obsessed with buttons, or depending on where you are from… also sometimes known as pins or badges. The potential of these small collectible items is endless, and we have made tens, if not hundreds of thousands of buttons over the years with the same sturdy machines we purchased before opening our doors in 2005.  Buttons adorn our greeting cards, come in themed packs that we design & assemble and can be made by our customers with felts & a little imagination.

When we opened our second location in Victoria, we knew we wanted to have button makers there as well. Not only did we want to have a button making station similar to our Vancouver shop, where customers could sit down anytime to draw or type something to be made into a button straight away, but we also knew that our new shop was too small to be able to have much studio space, so button making seemed like the perfect thing to keep idle hands busy when there were no customers in sight.

Between the two shops, we have a mostly organized, albeit slightly chaotic system of inventories, printouts, lists of buttons to be made & shipping procedures to ferry the parts and completed buttons to & fro. When they arrive at our Vancouver location, ready for us to affix them to a card or pack them into a button set, they have already been on a great adventure.

We are continually inspired to design new and clever buttons to amuse ourselves & our customers alike. And we also encourage anyone stopping by to make an original button… whether it be from the scribbles of a small child, the hand of a talented artist or a typewritten inside joke that no one but your friend Samantha will understand… the possibilities are absolutely endless.

 1. Paper Banners – Mexico   2. Fortune – United States   3. Postage Stamps – Czech Republic   4. Embroidered Letter B – Mexico   5. Geometric Rubber Stamp – Mexico   6. Apple Cocktail Garnish – Costa Rica   7. Writing Utensils – Japan   8. Arms & Legs – Mexico   9. Crane Rasp & Wooden Brush – Japan   10. Miniature Tabbed Dividers – Japan   11. Miniature Stationery Products – Mexico   12. ½ Jug – Mexico   13. ABC Notebook – Unknown   14. Metal Clips – Japan   15. Stencil Brush – Mexico   16. B & R Tiles – Spain   17. Air Mail Envelope – Philippines   18. Exercise Book – Thailand   19. Postage Stamp Packaging – New Zealand   20. Labels with Red Border - Brazil

It has been a few years since either of us has taken flight, and we are missing the way travel sparks our creativity, overloads our senses and fills our brains with weird & wonderful ideas. It is a time to reset and refresh, coming back with inspiration & excitement about the creative work we do. It also restores our energy to tackle all the seemingly endless and annoying tasks that come with owning a small business. 

We have both always loved travel and were lucky enough to be able to make it a priority from the very beginning, giving each other time & space each year to take off & explore. Over the course of the pandemic, we made do with alley walks & city adventures, graduating to short road trips & island bike camping expeditions. 

Although these small trips have allowed us to do one of our favourite things… plan… and our second favourite thing… look forward to a trip, the anticipation of traveling somewhere unknown has been sorely missed. The scenery of home has become all too familiar and we are longing for an adventure into the unknown, with our eyes peeled for colourful delights that bring us the sense of awe we crave & cherish. 

To cheer us up during these cold, dark and rainy winter months… and in anticipation of traveling once again, we have compiled a collection of some of our favourite travel finds in the photo above, for you to ogle over and enjoy. 

Our window displays have always prompted confusion and perplexed the passerby, especially before we put a sandwich board out front, proclaiming our purpose… The Regional Assembly of Text… cards, stationery, journals, souvenirs, button making, letter writing & many other clever things. Before this descriptive signage appeared, people would often pop their head in the door to ask, ‘what kind of a store are you anyway?’ But instead of putting products in our window, which we stubbornly refuse to do, we made a sandwich board for those dumbfounded people. This allows us to treat our window displays as temporary art installations which almost always involve paper & typewriters. In most instances the paper is recycled scraps from other projects and over the years we’ve concocted many different ways to connect paper to itself, by… folding, gluing, stapling, paper clipping, sewing, taping & weaving it together. We also find great delight in foraging thrift stores for paper that already comes on a roll, preferably narrow enough to emerge from the typewriters with satisfying simplicity. Our typewriters are almost always featured in these displays, luring people into our shop, only to be disappointed by the fact that we don’t sell them. But it starts a conversation, usually about the length of their dissertation and how sore their fingers got, or a sigh as they remember the smell of their grandparents basement where a dusty typewriter sat at an abandoned desk. We nod and listen and hope the nostalgia stuns them long enough to look around our unusual store.

The recent loss of our dear friend Josie Cook brings forth so many booky memories that we know it is time to tell the story of how our lowercase reading room evolved as we honour and remember Jo, her work & her friendship.

Previously a storage closet, currently a reading room, the lowercase is home to hundreds of zines and self-published books. It features the former collections of the (over)view gallery (Brandy & Rebecca’s) and Cyclops Library (Jo Cook’s), with a cozy little sitting area, all in a space measuring less than 9 by 3 feet.

It all began in May of 2007, when, after running our miniature space as a gallery for almost 2 years, showing a rotation of artist works on a whirlwind schedule, we began to realize it wasn’t a sensible endeavour. A conversation with Jo had us thinking of alternate uses for this unusual space tucked under the stairs in an often-unnoticed corner of our Vancouver storefront. Books. So simple and far more cohesive with the concept of our store, and also…where our true passion lies.

Jo was born in Minneapolis in 1946 and moved to Canada in 1969. Her life & art were one. Over her many decades as an artist, poet, writer, publisher, philosopher, bookmaker, traveler & knowledge seeker, she collected, traded, & acquired hundreds of artist books, which she so generously donated to us. It feels extra special to have these books from her extensive collection in our possession now that she is gone. A tangible comfort. A constant reassurance. A true inspiration. But we are also thankful to have a myriad of memories with her, cherished & ethereal… creating & collaborating in her studio, problem solving technologies both aggravating & essential, getting inky, drinking wine while drawing & talking into the wee hours, hosting ten years of Book & Beer shows together (a story for another time), eating cheese toasties & tomato soup, fighting with photocopiers, exchanging ideas, and being endlessly inspired by her creative, weird & wonderful spirit. She will be forever missed.

In her honour, we have reopened the lowercase reading room, after a long covidy break, and installed a show full of her books for you to enjoy. Jo had too many alter egos to count, but you will meet a few of them on display in our reading room… Bucky Fleur to be sure, and Florentine Perro, Frances Zorn, & Aby W. Blake if you are lucky.

None of the books in the lowercase are for sale, but we are always accepting donations, and until the end of August 2022, if you mail us a book you have made, we will send you one of ours in return. Please drop by our Vancouver store or feel free to send them by post to 3934 Main Street, Vancouver B.C. V5V 3P2 Canada. Be sure to include your name and a return address.

Oh how we’ve missed our Letter Writing Club over the past year. The thought of twenty strangers gathered around a long table, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, sipping tea and chatting freely, seems like something from another life. In that life, on the first Thursday of every month, since September of 2005, we have been opening our doors to welcome letter writers to this free event. Some come to diligently correspond with their pen pals or relatives, others come to reminisce and reacquaint themselves with a feeling of days gone by, and even more come, young and curious, ready to try something new.

At six o’clock on one of these evenings, we lock our doors and spend an hour transforming our Vancouver store, while a little line-up of eager letter writers begins to form. We install one long table down the centre of our shop, surrounded by 20 vintage chairs, a typewriter at each, and some rubber stamps scattered around to decorate envelopes and personalize letters. On our front counter we arrange an array of writing paper & envelopes and a station with tea & cookies. At seven o’clock we open our doors to the patient crowd who filter in, taking a seat to get acquainted with their machine. If there are regulars in the crowd, they lead the way to the front counter to gather supplies, but more often than not, the entire group, having never been before, sit politely waiting to be told what to do. “Come help yourself to paper and get to work” we say.

There is something special about typing on a typewriter that our digital devices haven’t been able to recreate, something charming and more human about spelling mistakes and a linear thought pattern, un-editable in many ways. There is no delete or backspace or inserting a word where one wasn’t, and your fingertips sure take a beating. But there are advantages to the effort it takes, as it can surely be felt by the recipient, just ask someone who has received a letter lately. In a time when creating an image of perfection seems like an ubiquitous goal, we encourage embracing mistakes, highlighting them, fixing them with a red ‘x’ and starting your sentence anew. After all, trying to get a perfect copy on a seventy-year-old machine with its fair share of quirks and idiosyncrasies is near impossible, and we think, beside the point.

Although it could be awhile before we gather again indoors, we can’t wait to hear the cacophony of machines click-clacking away and the sound of happy letter writers with us once again.

circa 2014 - when we renovated a container into our studio

Staying connected with the ones we love has always been at the heart of our business, and now more than ever, it is important to reach out to our family and friends, so they know they are loved during this current storm of uncertainty.

It’s been six weeks since we closed both our shops and we are feeling privileged to have been able to make this decision for the health and safety of our staff, customers and communities.

We feel thankful that our new website was up and running smoothly, allowing us to transition to online sales that will help us stay afloat. We had to set our employees adrift in small emergency vessels in hopes that they can weather the storm with the help of our government, as we try to steer the mother ship through the worst of it, so she can be there for them on the other side. We are strong sailors the two of us, having weathered a gale or two in our past, adaptable and ready for the challenge with our eyes peeled on the horizon, scanning for land or a ray of sunshine through the clouds.

In the meantime we are keeping our minds and hands busy. Introducing some timely products for your amusement.