Imperial Parchment

This box of Imperial Parchment paper, obtained recently via ebay, is something of an oddity. It’s announced as “a Terston product”, that being a brand-name used by George Waterston and Sons of Edinburgh and London, who went out of business over twenty years ago. The watermarked sheets within have an old-school look and feel, and the other text printed on the box, about the paper being “Hard Sized and Air-Dried” etc., is likewise redolent of a bygone era. Yet the box itself seems flimsily new.

Could this stuff be old stock re-packaged in the company’s declining years, or re-sold ‘posthumously’ by someone who acquired it when the manufacturer ceased trading? Might it even be counterfeit, unlikely as that seems? I may never know, but it’s good, relatively thick & heavyweight paper & there’s plenty of it.