Browse our vintage posts.

Winter is “show season” for Bas Bleu, when our editors travel to trade shows to source new products for our catalog. Earlier this month, editor KG headed to New York to attend NY Now, the National Stationery Show, and Shoppe Object.

The Bluestocking Salon has been quiet for the past few weeks because yours truly was traveling in France and England to source new products for Bas Bleu’s 2020 catalog season.

We’re celebrating 25 years of Bas Bleu (our catalog was “born” in 1994), and our editors and other staff have been touched by the anniversary messages we’ve received from our readers over the past few months.

This week in the Bluestocking Salon, Bas Bleu’s longest-standing employee, brand manager Christie Hall (whom our readers know as CH), reflects on her arrival at Bas Bleu; the company’s early days; and the influence of her mentor and friend, founder Eleanor Edmondson.

Our editors have been brainstorming the best way to give our customers what you’re asking for…while also satisfying some behind-the-scenes technical requirements on our end. We think we’ve found the solution!

Put on your party hat and pop the champagne: Bas Bleu is celebrating our silver anniversary!

In preparation for our 25th anniversary, our editors recently spent an afternoon sorting through old Bas Bleu “family photos” and taking a walk down memory lane! We had so much fun, we’re sharing some of the pictures and memories with you.

We pride ourselves on offering our readers fun, thoughtful, occasionally downright odd gifts, items you usually can’t buy at big-box stores or shopping malls. So…where do we find them?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Bas Bleu’s customers are the absolute best, for a multitude of reasons. Among our favorites: You recommend some wonderful books! So wonderful, in fact, that we created our Reader Review program.

As America’s largest annual book trade fair, BookExpo is a multi-day celebration of books attended by booksellers, librarians, publishers, literary agents, authors, and other members of the wide book world. We decided it was high time we give you a glimpse inside the big event!

Because Bas Bleu is proudly American—but royally charmed—we decided to commemorate the royal wedding by offering the Royal Wedding Mug in our Spring 2018 edition.

This year, we thought it would be fun to dig into the Bas Bleu mailbag and share with you some of the recent letters our editors have received.

If you’re making New Year’s resolutions for 2018, don’t just focus on the usual suspects—exercise every day, learn a new language, be nicer to your sister-in-law. Make a few New Year’s reading resolutions while you’re at it!

Letter writing may seem a throwback to an earlier, pre-digital time (and a downright foreign concept to younger generations), but at Bas Bleu we think it’s a habit worth celebrating.

For the past few years, editor AG has attended the annual London Book Fair to check out the British publishing scene…and to do a little sightseeing. She recently returned from her adventure across the pond and agreed to share some of the highlights with us in the Bluestocking Salon.

After ten years in our current office, our editorial staff is preparing to move into new, larger digs next month. In the midst of packing, we were delighted to rediscover boxes full of archived customer correspondence from Bas Bleu’s earlier days.

Around the time I retired from teaching high school math in 1996, I received my first Bas Bleu catalog in the mail. I found it delightful, and it inspired me to form a book club—appropriately named Bas Bleu…We meet in homes and do our own reviews.

Here at Bas Bleu, we’re not above gawking at celebrities. Literary celebrities, that is! And our editors enjoyed a rare sighting of one of the biggest names in books last week when Shakespeare’s First Folio rolled into town.

Books are our first loves at Bas Bleu, but you’ve probably noticed we’ve got a soft spot for cute bookish gifts too. From time to time, when we don’t find exactly what we’re looking for, we say, “We’ll make it ourselves!”

These confessions only make us love our fellow bluestockings—and our own coworkers!—that much more. Because there’s no such thing as a “perfect” reader.

Once upon a time (well, last January), writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh launched the #ReadWomen2014 hashtag on Twitter. Her purpose was two-fold.

When a lifestyle change forces us to flat-out get rid of books? That’s not a problem. That’s a full-fledged bluestocking crisis!

Just because it’s Wednesday and we want you to have nice things, we’ve put together a care package of literary treats to distract you on this hot summer day.

You may not know it, but this week is National Library Week. And here at the Bluestocking Salon, we think that’s worth celebrating.

Let’s begin with age: Perhaps it is most common to define a classic novel as one that’s been around long enough for successive generations to laud its merits. But if there’s an age requirement, what is it exactly?

In addition to introducing you to more than one hundred new books and bookish gifts, our Spring issue celebrates something extra special: Bas Bleu’s 20th anniversary!

What do you think is it about certain children’s books that stick with us over the years, their stories and characters branded into our memories even before we were capable of deciphering the letters on those pages?

After bidding adieu to 2013 last night, we awoke this morning to a sparkling fresh start and a determination to make this year—Bas Bleu’s twentieth!!!!—our best yet.

Newcomers to the Bas Bleu family always ask us about the initials that accompany our book reviews. Our longtime readers know that’s how we identify each review’s writer, but you may wonder why we feel the need to do so.

While you wait for our Fall 2013 catalog, we thought you’d like to learn about the method behind the madness that is creating an issue of the Bas Bleu catalog.

Does a protagonist’s likability determine whether or not a novel is worth reading?

We read stuff, and if we like it, we recommend it to you. It’s as simple as that. So it’s no wonder we love the idea behind the Little Free Libraries that are popping up in neighborhoods around the country.

The Bluestocking Salon invited Bas Bleu editors Christie Hall and Ann Gregory to take a seat and answer a dozen randomly selected questions from Chat Packs: Extremes.

In March, we received this charming letter from one of our customers, and we couldn’t resist sharing it with you.

May is National Short Story Month, so to celebrate, the Bluestocking Salon is hosting our first-ever game of Exquisite Corpse.

Last week, the fifth film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby hit the big screen. Because we thought our fellow bluestockings might be on the fence about it, one of our reviewers reread the novel and headed to the theater.

Here at Bas Bleu, a banned-books list is more commonly known as a “to-be-read-immediately” list. We read controversial books because they often have the most to teach us.

Decorative paper labels, also known as ex libris, are a stylish way to brand books from your personal library as your own, dramatically increasing the odds of having them returned to your shelves after being lent out to friends.

This week in the Bluestocking Salon, Ande Cook guides us through her creative process, providing a step-by-step look into the creation of “The Babysitter.”