Our story
Foolscap opened on Lake Road in 2016. Ruth runs the shop and binds the notebooks in the back room; Dan looks after the pens, and on Thursdays he mends them.
Behind the counter
Bookbinder, runs the shop
Ruth bound books for a Carlisle bindery for eleven years before she opened Foolscap. She chooses every paper on the shelves and sews each Askew notebook in the back room, four signatures at a time, with linen thread, so it opens flat.
“I wanted a shop where you could hold a sheet up to the window before you bought it.”
Pens
Every pen on the counter is filled and written out by Dan each morning. On Thursdays he cleans, aligns and smooths nibs while you wait, and tells you if a pen can’t be saved.
“Most pens that won’t write just need a wash. Bring it in before you give up on it.”
How we choose what’s on the shelves
Every paper is tried with three inks and a pencil before it goes on a shelf. If the ink feathers on a writing paper, it doesn’t come in.
Ask about any sheet and we’ll tell you its weight, whether it’s laid or wove, and what it’s good for. If we can’t, we shouldn’t be selling it.
The Askew notebooks are made in the back room: folded, pressed and sewn through the fold, so they open flat.
In our map paper and jute, at no charge, whether it’s a pen or a single card.
Keswick and its pencils
Solid graphite is found above Seathwaite in Borrowdale, pure enough to saw into sticks. Locals call it wad.
Pencil making starts in Keswick as a cottage trade, with local graphite.
Banks, Son & Co. open a pencil factory; by the middle of the century pencils are the town’s biggest industry.
The business becomes the Derwent Cumberland Pencil Company.
Production moves to Lillyhall, near Workington. The Derwent Pencil Museum stays in Keswick.
Foolscap opens on Lake Road, with a pot of pencils on the counter.