At London Letters our goal is to create beautiful stationery pieces that encourages you to write more letters. We believe that letters play an important role in modern society, and we're not alone in this view.
In 'In Conversation With' we chat with epistolarians of note to find out why they think letters are special, why they think they still matter today, and what drives their passion to promote them.
This month we were so happy to interview the founder of beloved letter writing stationery brand Pigeon Posted, John Morse-Brown. John trained as a mechanical engineer, before working abroad for three years, and then ran a graphic design agency for 25 years. He is married with 2 children, and lives in Birmingham, UK. Pigeon is his 6th invention, and the only one that has ever made him any money at all. He loves reading, growing veg, cycling, and finding new shops to stock Pigeon.
"This, I find, is one of the truly amazing things about letters. If you wrote about the minutiae of a normal day in an email, it would be utterly boring to read. Write it in a hand-written letter however, and it somehow comes alive, and is genuinely interesting. I think it’s all to do with the fact that when the recipient of your letter reads your actual handwriting, it’s almost like you’re in the room with them, telling them about your day."
Tell us a little bit about your own letter writing history. Do you recall the first letter you received, or wrote?
Having been lucky enough to be born well before the advent of the iPhone, I wrote a lot of letters when I was younger, right up to and beyond university. Like many people of my age (I’m in my 50s) I still have a box of them in the attic. But I also joined a penpal club when I was a teenager, which gave me pen-friends in Poland, Iran and China - which all turned out to be political hotspots not long after I started writing (the Polish shipyard strikes and the birth of Solidarity, the Iran-Iraq war, and Tiananmen Square - a very interesting political education, as well as some great friends!
How often do you write letters now?
I regularly write to my oldest daughter at university, and am so pleased that she writes back! The letters I receive are very precious...
Describe your letter writing set up for us. Do you have any favourite stationery or pens you use? Where do you like to write from?
As you’d expect, from the founder of a letter writing company, I only use Pigeons! I almost always write them in our ’snug’ - the little area of our kitchen with wide views of the garden and surrounding trees. I usually write with a fountain pen - I have 2 TWSBI pens which I really like - they are the only pens that I have found that almost never leak, so I carry them around in my pocket all the time.
What type of content would you use for a letter, as opposed to digital communication?
With letters (as opposed to emails), I am much more of a ’stream of consciousness’ sort of person. i.e. I generally write whatever pops in to my head, and the letter takes off from there. I think many people write letters like this - in fact the medium really lends itself to that kind of style. I only really write personal letters, and as the recipients are either friends or family, I usually decide they’d probably like to know whatever I decide to tell them, as I do with them.
This, I find, is one of the truly amazing things about letters. If you wrote about the minutiae of a normal day in an email, it would be utterly boring to read. Write it in a hand-written letter however, and it somehow comes alive, and is genuinely interesting. I think it’s all to do with the fact that when the recipient of your letter reads your actual handwriting, it’s almost like you’re in the room with them, telling them about your day. A hand-written letter somehow has this amazing ability to teleport the writer to the recipient, so that reading it is like having the writer in the same space as yourself. Truly special, and I don't think this applies to any other form of written communication.
Do you feel any positive benefits to your mental health when you're writing or receiving a letter?
I find it’s a really good way of feeling calmer. I think it’s the concentration that is required - you zone in on what you want to say. You’re thinking of the person who will be receiving it, and everything else just fades away.
I did an interesting experiment a little while ago. Whenever I send out a sample pack of Pigeons to a potential new shop, I always include a little hand-written note (you kind of have to do that if you’re in the business of hand-written letters!) But as I send lots of these, I was trying to write them very quickly, and my writing was beginning to be almost unintelligible. So I changed tack, and experimented with writing them really slowly… and it was amazing! Suddenly I got into the ‘zone’. My handwriting improved, and I actually enjoyed the act of writing them, even though I was effectively ‘writing lines’ where every one was the exactly the same words! The power of concentrating, and slowing down!
Are there any famous letters you're especially fond of?
It’s not really a letter, but I did get a humorous one published in The Times over the millennium...
Are there any letters that you've held onto for a long time? Do you have a favourite?
I have kept almost every Pigeon I have ever received. And I know I have a large box of them in the attic (which I haven’t been through for a long time), but I can remember one letter that’s in there - it’s from my pen friend in China. I remember it had the most amazing stamps on it, and it was sent to me in 1989, just before Tiananmen Square… I think I had a short letter from him some months later, but then completely lost touch with him. I remember his letters to me, at the age of about 17, were a complete eye-opener on the world, and really special. I can still remember the feeling of getting them in the post and reading them, almost 40 years later.
How do you envisage the future of letter writing?
I think it has a great future. Of course, as the owner of a business that relies on the sending and receiving of hand written letters, you wouldn’t expect me to say anything else, but I genuinely do believe it.
When I started Pigeon, I really had no idea whether the idea would take off or not (excuse the pun). All I knew was that I liked the idea, my friends liked it (and they’d seen me come up with a lot of mad ideas in my time) and I’d managed to work out how to get them commercially produced. I was lucky that within the first week, I managed to get on local TV, and I sold 100 packs. Since then it’s gone from strength to strength, growing every year. So much so that this week, I’m working on the paperwork to ship 30,000 packs to the US in a 20ft container… So when I say that I think writing has a great future, I really mean it!
What would you say to someone that's never written or received a letter before, to encourage them to try it?
There’s so many things you could say… I’d tell them about the joy of receiving letters, the mental health benefits of writing them, the anticipation of waiting for replies, the way you can really connect with a friend via hand written letters (in a way that no other medium allows). I could go on… But most of all, I’d say ‘just try it’. You won't look back.
A huge thank you to John for his time and passion. To find out more about Pigeon Posted or to get in touch with him, head here.
