The Bookshop and Stationer at Sea Pines Center

• Where: Suite 516, the Shops at Sea Pines Center, 71 Lighthouse Road
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed weekends
• What it is: An independent bookshop and stationer
• Phone: 843-816-0860

By Hand, Ink is the independent bookshop and stationer at the Shops at Sea Pines Center, in Suite 516. It is a small shop with a proper bookseller’s stock — new fiction faced out on the shelves, a table of beach reads in season, local authors given room — and a stationery counter that is the reason a lot of people come back.

Check the day before you drive. It opens Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and is closed at weekends, which is an unusual pattern for a shop in Sea Pines and catches visitors out.

Books

It is a real bookshop rather than a rack of paperbacks in a gift store: current hardbacks, novels, cookbooks and a shelf of books by writers from the Lowcountry. Regional authors come in to sign, though not to a published schedule, so it is worth asking what is coming up when you are in.

Paper, Pens and Sealing Wax

The other half of the shop is for people who still write things down. Fine Italian stationery, letterpress cards, boxed note cards, greeting cards, bookmarks and bookplates, gift wrap and ribbon, pens and ink, parchment, sealing wax and seals, letter openers made by hand in Italy, and French crystal paperweights. Gift wrapping is free and the shop ships worldwide, which between them make it a sensible place to solve a present you have left too late.

Who Runs It

Bobbi Hahn, a calligrapher of more than thirty years, opened By Hand, Ink in January 2014 as a calligraphy and design studio upstairs at the centre, making note cards, framed quotes and commissioned work. It moved down to a shop floor in 2015, added stationery and gifts, and grew the book side from there. The stock is chosen rather than ordered in by category, which is what the shop has instead of scale.

Getting There

The Shops at Sea Pines Center sit just inside the main Greenwood Drive gate, so it is the shortest drive of any shop in the resort. Unless you own property in Sea Pines, are a resort guest or have a rental booking there, the gate fee is $10 per day for a standard vehicle; the guest pass office page has the rest. If you are coming in only for this shop, it is worth a phone call first — Sea Pines merchants have been known to arrange a pass for a customer, and at the very least you will not arrive on a day it is shut.

The centre has the rest of its tenants on our Sea Pines Center page, including Peddling Pelican two doors along, and Plantation Station is the coffee stop.