Profile
Buy divine
invitations
She’s been getting the party started
with her couture invitations for the
last 20 years. Henrietta McCausland,
owner of the Grosvenor Stationery
Company, discusses the enduring
appeal of stationery with Kate White
To some people, a pencil is a pencil. To others, it’s a poem
waiting to be written, a letter to be penned, an idea that could
change the world and endless possibilities. If you are the
second type of person, then you might just have a stationery
fetish.
The Grosvenor Stationery Company opened 20 years ago and
has been supplying Belgravians with exquisite invitations,
writing paper and correspondence cards ever since. Owner
Henrietta McCausland moved to new premises at 47 Elizabeth
Street this year and her minimalist new shop provides the
perfect backdrop for her colourful stationery. “I like the
coolness of the shop, it’s not cluttered and it’s a restful place
where you can make informed decisions,” she says.
There are 54 colours of board and several hundred inks from
which to create invitations. “Where we’re exuberant with our
colour schemes, we’re far more pared down with the
presentation of the text. We do very sharp, defined type-setting,
so the lettering is really cool and good.” Traditional invitations
– the classic, copperplate script on an ivory backdrop – sell
well, but people are beginning to get more colourful.
“People have responded to colour slowly, because the English
are quite conservative in their tastes.” In America, where
Grosvenor Stationery is stocked in department stores from New
York to California, it’s a different story. “The explosion of
colour has been received really well by the Americans. They’ve
been very responsive to it and the fact that it’s from England.
The laugh is, the English have only just caught up. The English
aren’t used to looking at this exuberance, but they’re now
starting to embrace it.”
Henrietta believes the love of stationery stems back to the
classroom. “Do you remember the first day of a new term at
school? You got a brand new exercise book and you very
carefully wrote your name on the front cover. Then you turned
over – and there was that squidgy first page on the right hand
side. There was no other page like that first page. Then you
turned over again and the other side was that thin, scratchy
sheet. That’s an abiding memory from my childhood.”
Stationery can symbolise a new start, she says. “In the same
way we can always go on a diet, we can buy stationery and start
again. We believe that if we just bought that new notebook, that
pen, that sheet of paper, then everything would flow. Of course
it never does, but there we go. The potential for something
new is always there, and that’s very appealing.”
There’s an inherent glamour to receiving an invitation. “If
you get a beautifully thought out and executed invitation that
thumps on your doormat because it’s so heavy, it just looks
gorgeous. It’s the guest’s introduction to the party, so it has to
set the tone and create a sense of occasion.”
Making invitations is something Henrietta never tires of.
Once the client has settled on a colour scheme, they are
typeset, hand-engraved, printed and bevelled, then slipped
inside handmade, tissue-lined envelopes. “It’s worth all the
heartache, it really is. And there is a lot of heartache attached
to this business, because there are so many links in the
production chain and so much potential for misunderstanding.
But finally when the end result arrives, it is delicious. It is really
delicious. It does actually make your heart flutter a little bit.”
22
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28