I thought it would be fun to have a whole week of posts about an old brand of notebooks that used to be ubiquitous and now has become almost– but not quite— extinct: Boorum and Pease. They started out as an independent manufacturer of blank books based in Brooklyn, but since then, they’ve been absorbed in a couple of corporate mergers and the name has largely disappeared, except for a few products. Most of the Boorum & Pease notebooks that are available today
These are pretty cool for their own reasons, but they aren’t pocket size notebooks for the casual user like Boorum & Pease used to make. This week’s posts will take a look a closer look at a couple of their old-style notebooks, which many notebook enthusiasts are desperately trying to find nowadays!
Stay tuned for some retro notebook goodness, and in the meantime, here’s a few posts where I’ve mentioned this brand before:
Boorum and Pease Engineer’s Field Book, Late 1980s
Notebook Addict of the Week: John Dickerson
Notebook Trivia: Boorum & Pease Building
I invite you to me on my blog. Greetings from Poland!
http://mypens82.blogspot.com/
Thanks for this trip back in Notebook Stories and Boorum & Pease time. I especially liked the “sexy-retro-ugly” characterization of the engineer’s field book. The color is unappealing to say the least, but there’s history and nostalgia surrounding the format and use that makes it super appealing. The closest I get to anything like architecture and engineering is marketing (that’s my day job), but seeing notebooks like that makes me wish my brain led me in that direction. There’s something really romantic about going out and making surveying calculations and drawings manually, and I wish it were something I could do.
I just picked up a big old vintage B&P record book (14 inches tall and 300 pages), almost mint condition. I got it for $3 at Goodwill! I see they are over $100 retail new. I know I am in possession of a sacred object and so would like to know what did people use these record books for (it’s not an accounting record book but a journal format with numbered pages and a contents table.)? I want to be SURE of what I want to use it for before I start messing it up, so to speak. I do that with journals all the time. I start some topic in them and then change. What is the historical use of these journals? Law offices? Doctors? Real estate?? Help!
I inherited a box of antiquarian books and in it is an extremely old Boorum & Pease Co notebook. It says, “Standard, No S29 1/2″ inside. It’s a 3-ring binder and is 4×7”. It looks about 60+ years old as it was in a box with my great grandmothers genealogy books. It’s kind of beat up but is a great nostalgic piece. Would love to share it with someone who would give it the love it needs. Pic available.
I am organizing a 78 RPM record collection that I inherited from my great aunt and my grandmother over 40 years ago. The records were logged in 7″ x 4-12″ binder filled with 6-1/2″ x 3-3/4″ loose leaf 6-hole paper, and is identified as “Boorum & Pease Co. Standard No. S 330 1/2 B Made in USA” (in gold ink or leaf.) Binder material is either black morocco or a very good imitation. The recordings are from a period beginning in the late 1920’s. Anyone familiar with this little binder?
i have a boorum & pease co ledger 6215-B good condition
how do i find out how much its worth Would like to sell it
My grandparents gave me a couple old pocket binder notebooks 30+ years ago, and I just today finally got refill paper for the nicer one. A green Boorum & Pease “Standard® 226½ PG” ‘Pocket’ A7 size. I suspect my grandfather used it for garage/maintenance tracking, since it was pretty dirty/greasy. Cleaned up really well with DX330 though. :-) How did they get ‘Standard’ as a registered trademark?
Hi, I just visited Sildarminjasafnid in Northern Iceland and in the herring museum found a wonderful Boorum and Pease ledger in excellent condition recording transactions from 1944 during the British American “occupation” (as they call it) in WW2. If anyone is interested, I can send photos. Personally, I am on book number 50+ is my own use of B&Ps as lab notebooks and I love them.
I have a blank page borum & pease law abstract book no. 13558. Can anyone tell me years it was sold?
i have one that’s a 6-ring binder with really nice paper and i’ve been trying to find some similar paper for it. its a standard no s28 1/2. didn’t realize how old/extinct it was when i got it a this thrift store. sounds closest to sam iamo’s binder, i might’ve just written and scrapbooked in a notebook from the 1920s, oh dear. just thought i’d share, not much info out on the web for this.
My father sold B&P office supplies to bookstores in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, & Louisiana from about 1955-1972. How I wish I would have kept some samples! He made a great living with Boorum & Please. I’ll always be thankful for them. I got to go to a national sales meeting in NYC in 1964 and was quite impressed as a 14 year old. My dad had to retire from B&P when the doctors diagnosed him with early dementia. He was the first person in South Texas to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 1973 and then died in 1979. When he retired, B & P hired five — yes 5 salespersons to replace him & his huge territory! I’ll forever be grateful for this fine company. It served our family of five quite well!