It’s one of the most common tropes of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, from the 1880s to the 1950s! It appears in everything from Sherlock Holmes to Peter Wimsey, Poirot to Miss Marple – the vital clue – the incriminating message – the saving grace – written on a sheet of paper, flipped over, and then blotted on a sheet of blotting paper, which the killer, extortionist, blackmailer or other careless desperado – then – conveniently – forgets to dispose of! As Holmes would say: “There’s nothing so important as the study of trifles!”

Since the second half of the 1800s, desk blotters or blotting pads, have been a staple on every well-appointed desktop. Designed to hold a sheet of blotting paper where it was convenient, and handy for keeping spills, stains and marks off of the surface of your – presumably – very beautiful, and expensive desk – desk-blotters served a multitude of purposes: Coaster, food-tray, jotting-pad, blotter, and even a launchpad for the greatest ideas in the world!…the sheet of blotting paper detailing the original design for the “Crystal Palace” is one of the most famous in the world!

I bought this blotter pad at a local antiques store about three years ago for just $10.00. It was in decent shape, but the more I looked at it, the more I realised just how tired, worn out and in need of attention, it really was. The surface of the pad was covered in ring-marks from old drinks and the triangular, leather corner tabs were peeling and lifting from old age and the glue used to adhere it, becoming unstuck.

Fed up with constantly having to glue the damaged tabs back down, over, and over, and over again, I decided to just pull the whole thing apart, and do a proper restoration!

Restoring the Blotting Pad

The first step was to do something about all these ugly marks on the surface of the pad. The actual structure of the pad was in excellent condition, but it wasn’t the prettiest thing to look at. I found some scrap leather in a nice, dark blue colour, and started measuring and stretching and trimming it to the right size. I spread down glue and pressed the leather over the top of the old pad. The leather would make the pad look nicer, it would last longer, and the softness of the leather would provide cushioning for writing – so it didn’t feel like you were trying to carve your name into the desk while writing.

To hide the raw edges of the leather, the next step was to fit in a ribboned border, with some matching blue ribbon. This was easy enough, although it took rather more glue than I had anticipated!

The final step was the hardest: Attaching the blotting paper tabs.

The original tabs were very flimsy – they were literally paper-thin sheets of leather glued and folded around pieces of paper! Something this delicate would be impossible for me to repair, so I decided to cut away all the excess underside paper, leaving me with just the upper leather tabs – the only part which would show.

I found some scrap leather, and using the tabs as stencils, I traced and cut out four identical triangles of leather. I glued the original leather tabs onto their new, leather backing pieces, and then I glued, and nailed, the tabs into the corners of the blotter pad. The pad was more than thick enough to fit the nails, and the corner-tabs would hide the unfinished edges of the ribbon border around the edge of the pad.

I had planned to just glue the tabs down, like they had been originally, but it was soon obvious that the thickness of the blotting paper would simply pull the tabs right up off of the surface of the blotter, and no amount of glue would be strong enough to hold the tabs down. So in the end, I decided that a few, tiny, discrete nails, carefully hammered into the right places, would be ideal. They would be barely noticeable, they’d fit in well, and be so small as to be virtually invisible.

The whole process took less than a day, and the end result was simple, elegant, and robust.

Concluding Remarks

Breathing new life into this battered and obviously well-used blotting pad was much easier than I originally thought it might be. My greatest fear was tearing the original tabs, because of how thin they were, but the whole restoration process was surprisingly easy. I had a choice, when resurfacing the pad, of using brown or blue leather, but since most of the pads I’ve seen were almost always some shade of brown, or other heavy, dark colour, I chose blue so that it would stand out more, and I think the results speak for themselves!

Once I’ve fitted out the blotter with fresh blotting paper, it’ll be ready to grace another desktop for another 100 years!