Mood indigo curious

Kyoko Uino of Gojuon sent us this photo of a display case in their petite boutique in the Ginza section of Tokyo.  Artifacts from the lost art of penmanship,  antique writing implements for handpressed paper.  Weight. texture, colour fill the air of this tiny shop pointing back to a more hands on era of communication.   One does not see an ipad in this case of antiquity, but I find anachronisms interesting.  Today our communication is through the gauze of electronic gadgetry and satellite pings, to wit, this very blog.  Yes, handwritten is older than an email but consider this.

In today's web parlance, we talk of the front door of a website and the backdoor.  Users are told we only need to know how to push the buttons at the front end, which is how I manage this website thanks to the wizardry of Shopify.  The backdoor is for the 'techies' to enter and do the programming code and  software and behind that the hardware etcetera  ad infinitum.....

But one could say there is also a front door and  backdoor to pen and paper. (And I dont mean chronistically as in one starts where the other left off). Where did the pen and paper come from? Who made the pen and what is it made of? The ink itself and how is it made with a centuries old recipe so it looks indigo? In my mind, electronic device and pen and paper share this  stage with front door/back door access and a common key which is curiosity.