On Tabula Rasa.
Dear READER,
Tabula Rasa is a (note)book.
The words mean “scraped tablet” in Latin. Throughout ancient thought, philosophers returned to this image of a blank slate: a mind at birth that is free of markings, to be impressioned by experience.
I don’t necessarily believe the human mind to be truly blank upon inception. That’s not what we’re here to discuss. To be clear, I don’t present this object in support of that philosophy or any particular philosopher. I simply nod to and reinterpret a concept. Perhaps there are innate ideas, things carried that are unknown and to be rightfullydiscovered. But there is something undeniably beautiful and truthful about the blank slate: its stillness, its invitation, where Blankness meets and necessitates possibility.
I often think there is a parallel between how we acquire knowledge as humans and how we bring creative ideas into the world. Forever indeed, there is a starting point that, for me, is often a blank page. A place for to-do lists, thoughts and musings. These seemingly mundane inscriptions are where larger ideas begin to take shape. Big ideas start small.
This, my starting point for Tabula Rasa. The first blank (note)book and creative object by Forty-Four Words. It is a travellers notebook: A6, wrapped in red hair-on-hide leather, holding two blank inserts—one blind-embossed with TABULA RASA, the other with BLANK BOOK.
Tabula Rasa totals 120 pages that are unprescriptive. They wait. Each mark you make (or not) is part of a larger story about what it means to capture memory in the physical. It is refillable, designed to evolve with its author. And carries an ISBN. Even blank, it is a book catalogued as a published work before a single idea has been translated.
What does it mean to publish a story before it exists? To anticipate its coming? To send a blank book into the archive of human thought with its pages full of potential and not history?
Forty-Four Words is an experimental publisher of handmade-to-order books and creative objects. It is, indeed, a school of thought in formation—centered on play, on the act of making, on asking how words and objects determine each other through the book form. I am interested in how we encounter books as containers of content and tools for living. With Tabula Rasa, the question is: what will you make of it?
And so, Tabula Rasa invites you to begin. Tabula Rasa is available to encounter online (www.44words.art/tabula-rasa) and in person from 23rd July 2025 at Somerset House. Until then.
Amanda Boachie ✨
Founder, Forty-Four Words
