A Gift to Myself - The Ledgers

This Holiday Season I decided to take Mary Ann Moss's Journal Class - Remains of the Day. One of the materials she suggested using was old ledger paper. As I have several old ledgers and some blank ledger pages I figured I was all set. I went to tear up one of my old ledgers and thought "I can't do this." So off I went to the internet to see if I couldn't find another ledger to rip up.

Instead I found these three ledger being sold together. The hand marbled fronts and leather spines were too much for me. The insides were filled with store purchases from one, another was a hotel ledger with the guest signing in and what they ate in the dining room and how many horses they boarded in the stable. Be still my heart. These were beautiful.

I gift to myself. That little bit of holiday money set aside for THAT purchase. These would be that purchase. On Saturday afternoon they came. I spent most of yesterday gingerly reading them, admiring the fine script, the names, and meals they ate. The prices for goods and imagining what they looked like. No, I won't be tearing these up anytime soon. And yes, I found another ledger that I already had. It was not as charming as these, but I decided that it would do just fine in my new journals.

The three ledgers with there marbled paper fronts. They are around sixteen to twenty inches long. Two are thin, around a hundred to hundred fifty pages or more. The bottom large one has almost three hundred pages.

The worn spines where the leather as worn away.

The fronts of the ledgers. I think at one time the front pages were painted.

A well worn corner.