The room behind the counter

The press is weight on paper, not type.

Paper Moth keeps a press the way a stationer means it: a stack, a board, and enough weight to hold cotton flat. There is no chase, no roller, and no job ticket for invitations.

The front of the shop is one room on Clinton Street. Drawers are labeled by fiber and weight. Ink is in a cupboard, off the glass. Pencils lie in a tray, hard grades on the left, soft on the right. Envelopes stand on edge so the flap and the size show. The press room is through the door behind the desk. You may step back when we pull a stack. There is no tour, and there is no second floor.

The count

A sale is four facts and a number.

1. Fiber: 25% cotton or 100% cotton.
2. Weight, in grams per square meter, as printed on the drawer.
3. Size: letter, A5, monarch, or the cover sheet.
4. Count: a sheet, a quire of 25, or, where we keep one, a ream of 500.

We pull from the labeled drawer. We count. If the number is not a full quire or a full ream, we count again. A quire here is 25 sheets. A ream is 500. We do not call 480 a ream. Forty sheets is one quire and fifteen, counted as forty, not rounded up to a second quire.

The wrap is glassine, then kraft. If you are going to fold, we write the grain direction on the kraft. Long grain on our letter sheets runs the 11-inch way. We will not guess the grain from across the room.

What we will not do

We do not cut a custom size. The sizes in the drawers are the sizes we sell. We do not print a letterhead, a card, a menu, or a suite. If the sheet has to go through a press of the other kind, that work belongs to a printer. We will still sell the paper, and we will say the weight, the sizing, and the grain so you can repeat them accurately.

We do not assemble wedding suites. We do not address envelopes. We do not keep a book of samples for an event. The stock is the stock on the cotton, ink, pencil, and envelope pages.

Who is at the desk

On Monday through Friday one person has the counter. On Saturday there is a second pair of hands, because counts take longer when the sidewalk is busy. Payment is cash or a card, at the counter, after the ticket price is read aloud. We do not run a checkout on this site.

A message sent through the note page is not an order. An order is a count agreed at the desk, or a count written to desk@papermoth.shop that we confirm before anything is wrapped. If we are counting when you call (319) 555-0194, the phone waits.

Hours and the hour we stop starting a fresh ream are on the hours page.