Blicks

Went to Blicks in Santa Monica last night.  Blicks is a large store, carrying art & drafting supplies.  Blicks is a chain with stores all around the country.  In California, they are concentrated in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.  We could use one or two of these stores in Ventura County.  I would apply for a job as a second source of income.  I have been under the impression that computers had pretty much taken over, and that drafting supplies were a thing of the past.  It was refreshing to see such a wide of selection of drafting supplies being sold, including many templates.  

Walking up & down the aisles really took me back to the family store.  I was seeing a lot of the same items that we carried.  In the drafting area, I saw t-squares, triangle rules, templates, compasses, vellum, drafting boards & tables.  I also saw lots of art tablets; drawing, pastel, watercolor, etc.  Tempura paint.  Lettering pens.  And brand names:  Alvin, Pickett, Crayola, Strathmore, Faber-Castell, Sanford, Speedball.  This really took me back to my favorite section of the store.  Remembering those times when it was time to re-arrange and move various sections of products – I enjoyed organizing the art & drafting supplies most of all.

And during our visit, I was surprised by my son, Ken, who wanted to purchase some pastels and paper.  I’ve not heard him express an interest in art before.  As Cathleen was looking at the merchandise, she commented about Faber-Castell being an older company.  This led me to do a Google search on Faber.  What caught my eye from the search results, was a series of articles called American Stationer, written in the early 1900’s about the stationery business.  These are available on GoogleBooks, or archive.org, which is a site I like to use in my genealogy research.  I've got some reading to do!