Imagine a young woman sitting in the accounts payable department of an Italian trading office in 1910. The afternoon is dragging interminably. She drifts into a reverie and starts to doodle on the invoice in front of her. Like many educated people of the time, she can draw with reasonable competence. She sketches the faces of her coworkers as she remembers them at the recent New Year's fancy-dress party. The result of this graphic detour is a fascinating mixture of period commerce and art.

Is it important that she never actually put pencil to paper and that it is you or I who decides to act out her part for her? Is the invoice worth less because we have created a fiction over a fact? Surely what matters is the degree of poignant emotion evoked by the resultant piece of paper.

I love the idea of a creativity that honors the effects of time and makes mischief with history. Growing up in a society where hard, cold, and shiny are often highly valued, I find myself gravitating toward the opposite. Snow-blinded by bleached white paper, I crave smoky patina and shadowy aged surfaces.

Urgent 2nd Class is a handbook for those who wish to learn how to embellish and tamper with old documents, envelopes, and other ephemeral scraps. Its intended purpose is to bring into focus an art form that has barely been identified, let alone described.

I hope this volume begins to remedy that lapse, as well as encourage and stimulate innate creativity. ~ Nick Bantock