Description
Clack, clack, clack, ding. For thirty years that was the sound of Monsieur Duval’s study, drifting out over the garden of his house in Arles every morning from six until noon. He wrote eleven detective novels on the same black machine, never once on a computer, and kept a jar of spare ribbons on the windowsill beside a pot of rosemary. When his granddaughter asked why he never switched, he said the machine argued back, and that was how he knew the sentences were good.
This box honours writers who love that kind of conversation with their tools. It is shaped as a classic mechanical typewriter, keys and carriage carefully rendered, and it opens to keep small items close at hand. Give it to a novelist celebrating a first book deal, a journalist on retirement, a student heading off to study literature, or the friend who still writes letters by hand. Set beside a stack of notebooks and a good fountain pen, it looks like it has a few stories of its own to tell, and it may well inspire one or two more.
A closer look
- A classic mechanical typewriter
- Opens to keep small items such as a pen nib or a paper clip
- Measures 2 x 2.25 x 1.5 inches
- Made by Rochard, its keys and carriage painted by hand in Limoges, France
What a fitting desk companion this makes for anyone whose best ideas arrive one letter at a time.
