Ashland store promotes handwritten communication in digital age

ASHLAND, Neb. (KOLN) - A store on the brick main street of Ashland in Saunders County, encourages customers to put pen to paper.

Postscript, owned by Laura Capp, opened in 2015 as a space dedicated to reading and writing in traditional forms.

Capp initially planned to become an English professor while studying at the University of Iowa. She discovered the Center for the Book, a program that teaches traditional book arts including calligraphy, letterpress printing and bookbinding.

“I became really enamored with it and I ended up doing an MFA in that program as well,” Capp said. “When I got to the end of that road, I just really wanted a creative job where I could work with literature, but in a different, more tactile way.”

Capp said the only way to get the job she envisioned was to invent it.

“So this was my experiment and I’m really grateful to still be here 10 years later,” she said.

The store’s name reflects Capp’s philosophy about handwritten communication.

“It’s what you might add at the end of a letter if you had an afterthought or something that you wanted to tuck in after the fact,” Capp said. “I just love that aspect of writing by hand where we don’t have a cursor where we can go edit something to perfection. It’s just kind of a natural way of communicating that is really lovely.”

Capp said she also liked the idea of living in a post-script world where screens and typing dominate.

“I really want to kind of encourage people to use their own handwriting and communicate in an older fashioned way,” she said.

The store occupies a building with exposed brick that previously housed the Ashland Gazette. Before that, it was home to a fitness center. The space sat vacant for about 10 years before that.

Postscript sells cards, stationery, notepads, notebooks and journals. The store also carries novels, nonfiction, poetry and picture books for children.

Capp stocks desk and office goods including pens, pencils, vintage stamps and brass letter openers.

The store offers coffee and runs workshops in skills like calligraphy and bookbinding.

Customers can find Postscript on Instagram, which cross-posts to Facebook. The store also has a website where many in-store items are available for purchase.

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