OH. MY. GOD. If you like vintage stationery, Au Petit Bonheur la Chance is pretty much the best place in the world.
It’s stacked floor to ceiling with vintage homewares and stationery and is BRILLIANT. This is going to be a bit of a picture-heavy post, because in writing this I’m finding it hard to describe so I’ll let the photos do the talking.
You have to be prepared to rummage a bit to find the good stuff – but beware, the owner will tell you to put everything back where you found it!
She also knows her stuff and doesn’t do bargaining (we tried…)! It covers everything from random Chinese pencil sharpeners, to school notebooks, a great selection of rulers, and every conceivable size and shape of eraser. Although it may look quite unorganised in these pictures, there are definite sections, and as I said before, everything has its place.
Here’s all the bits I came away with:
I can only imagine this is a school exercise book. I really love the flamingo design on the front cover, so cool. It’s a reporter style notepad, and the lines on the inside are a strange long, thin grid. I’ve not seen this before… Maybe it’s used for maths? Or handwriting practice? I don’t know. (Also, just to say, this picture looks like it’s been stretched, but it really is just long and thin.)
I also got this lovely wooden set square, and Mallat Triplex eraser. I love the colour scheme.
This little notebook intrigued me so much that I had to buy it. It seems to be a notebook from a workplace insurance company… I think. It’s not clear what the purpose of the notebook is, to keep note of your workplace incidents? Who knows… Anyway, I absolutely adore the design on the front cover, it’s perfect. I even like that it’s wonky! It must be pretty old, possibly very early 20th century.
And this is my favourite find:
A Microtomic Van Dyke pencil from the 1950s by Eberhard Faber, with it’s familiar ferrule, à la Blackwing pencils, which were originally made by the same company. They must have decided to get a bit more use out of that ferrule machine.
Anyway, you can see how much I found in about 20 minutes – I got all this for about €20, God knows how much I could have spent… It really feels like you’re hunting for treasure in there! If you are in Paris any time soon, I can’t recommend this place highly enough. Just go.
I think I would probably hide somewhere and try and spend a night in this shop. What a treasure trove x
Haha, good luck trying to find somewhere to hide – it really is packed floor to ceiling with stuff!