I remember the paper they made us use when we were learning how to write upper and lower case letters. We also had writing books where we had to practice our cursive writing. I watched a British program the other night which featured a visit to The Pen Museum in Birmingham, England. At one time Birmingham was the largest manufacturer of the nibs used in ink pens. I had forgotten that as a kid in grammar school, we used wooden pens with nibs inserted in them, and had to dip the nib into the bottle of ink in order to write. It was a very messy way to write, and you had to blot everything so it wouldn’t smudge.
6th grade was our right of passage when we were allowed to have real ink in our ink wells. We were told to report to school at the beginning of the2nd week with a “pen wiper” that we had made over the weekend. This pen wiper was made of several layers of absorbant cotton fabric, and it hung by a string from the corner of our desks. The girls made ink wipers out of layers of cotton flannel cut with pinking shears that had pretty covers decorated with lace and ribbons. The boys brought a stack of random old rags run through with a string.
The teacher chose 2 boys to fill the ink wells out of a gallon of INDELIBLE ink. It was risky business.