Paper Notebooks

It’s no secret that I love pens, so of course I have a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to use paper. In my illus­tra­tion I use Strath­more smooth fin­ish Bris­tol. I was taught that I was sup­posed to pre­fer kid fin­ish, but it seems too toothy to me; too easy to tear up. Maybe it’d work out if you’re doing all of your work in brush, but met­al pens tear that stuff to shreds. And I’ve nev­er thought about it that much. Pads of Bris­tol aren’t cheap, but they aren’t pre­cious either. It’s always been a util­i­tar­i­an deci­sion with­out much romance attached.

Writ­ing note­books are anoth­er sto­ry. There’s an incred­i­ble amount of hype sur­round­ing writ­ing note­books, and I’ve tend­ed to view the hys­te­ria as some­what curi­ous. I can­not sit in any judge­memt of course, I do have roman­tic attach­ment to sta­tion­ary. I very much like my old stand-by, Crane’s 32 lb 100% cot­ton «executive» sheets in Pearl or Ecru White. On the oth­er end of the spec­trum is Eaton’s air mail paper, a 9 lb 25% cot­ton stock that’s near­ly trans­par­ent and del­i­cate like a but­ter­fly­’s wing. I also have a small vari­ety of stocks pur­chased by the sheet from Flax and some love­ly translu­cent let­ter-size stock that will hold ink nei­ther from a foun­tain pen nor from an inkjet print­er. Suf­fice it to say that I buy cor­re­spon­dence stock in much greater quan­ti­ties than I send out in correspondence.

So believe me, I’m sym­pa­thet­ic and more than a lit­tle curi­ous about the great pop­u­lar­i­ty of spe­cial­ty jour­nals and note­books. There are the Mole­sk­ine faith­ful, the Lev­enger fans, all with their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for spend­ing fif­teen to fifty dol­lars for a note­book, and of course a near­ly infi­nite sup­ply of refill­able (usu­al­ly) leather jour­nals. And you can’t for­get those orange Rho­dia notepads.

Some have claimed that the paper in these pre­mi­um note­books isn’t real­ly all that much bet­ter than that found in com­mon com­po­si­tion books. Now I’ve got­ta say that I’ve gone through my share of Mead com­po­si­tion books, and for a cou­ple of bucks noth­ing beats ’em. There are some spe­cial­ty vari­eties, but the plain Mead «composition» seems to be the best. The «Grad» has a very nice durable cov­er, but the pages are too thin to write on both sides even with a ball­point. It’s impor­tant, too, to inspect the labels. Some say «Made in the USA» and oth­ers are «Made in Chi­na». I don’t know if it’s pos­si­ble to get an Amer­i­can-made Mead note­book any­more, but my 1994 (USA) Mead com­po­si­tion book is a bright white, where all my 2001 and 2004 (Chi­nese) Mead com­po­si­tion books have start­ed to yel­low. So hey, maybe fat, lazy, spoiled Union work­ers real­ly do put out bet­ter prod­ucts than Chi­nese con­victs and twelve-year-old slaves. I know. Rad­i­cal idea, isn’t it?

(I meant to draw a com­par­i­son between the Mead note­books and the vari­ety of Wal­greens house-brand note­books, but look­ing more close­ly, the Pen­way (US-made) note­book has a decent, smooth feel to it. (Chi­nese-made) Cor­ner Office note­books are like lined newsprint. The Pen­way isn’t as good as the bet­ter Mead com­po­si­tion books I have, but per­haps I should be look­ing more at the coun­try of ori­gin rather than the brand name.)

To sat­is­fy my own curios­i­ty, I spent what seems like an obscene amount of mon­ey on pre­mi­um note­books. I bought a vari­ety of Mole­sk­ines, a Claire­fontaine, and a Miquel­rius. I did­n’t both­er with the «premium» jour­nals from Cav­alli­ni. I’ve used them before. Won­der­ful bind­ings, crap­py paper. ‘Nuff said, I’m afraid.

Already, this seems insane. I’ve nev­er put this much thought into pur­chas­ing sketch­books, and I’ve always got­ten paper far supe­ri­or to what’s found in most com­po­si­tion books. Maybe that’s the answer for the jour­nal snobs out there. Give up need­ing lined paper, and sud­den­ly good paper is easy and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive. Cachet makes the ubiq­ui­tous black hard­cov­er sewn-bind­ing sketch­book filled with 70 lb ph-neu­tral paper for ten bucks, and last I checked New Jer­sey has labor laws that pre­vent using pet­ty crim­i­nals as slave labor. That com­pares nice­ly to the price of the «premium» note­books I bought. But I digress.

I won’t write about the Mole­sk­ines quite yet, as I have more arriv­ing this week. I haven’t writ­ten any­thing in the Claire­fontaine note­book I picked up and can­not yet com­ment. That leaves the Miquelrius.

I’ve writ­ten at least a page with each of my foun­tain pens (and some that don’t belong to me) in my black Miquel­rius note­book and have a pret­ty good feel for it. Miquel­rius’s web­site is a love­ly exam­ple of Web design for Web design­ers, specif­i­cal­ly for the design­ers that designed the Miquel­rius web­site. Any­one else should stay away. The whole thing is Flash and has won­der­ful trans­par­ent effects and slid­ing menus and is, of course, total­ly devoid of infor­ma­tion. Thank­ful­ly Pen­de­mo­ni­um has the infor­ma­tion I want­ed: yes, the paper is acid-free. The com­pa­ny sup­pos­ed­ly guar­an­tees the paper to endure for a cen­tu­ry. That I could­n’t find this infor­ma­tion on Miquel­rius’s site is fur­ther evi­dence against hir­ing Web design­ers who are in love with their fan­cy effects.

Any­way, the note­book’s got a durable cov­er and end papers, which I can’t help but think is a classy touch. I don’t like the feel of the cov­er that much; it’s a tex­tured flex­i­ble plas­tic that wants to feel like leather but ends up just feel­ing slick. The actu­al paper is clean white, rea­son­ably opaque but not bril­liant. If it real­ly stays like that for a hun­dred years, you can’t go too far wrong with it. I wrote «reasonably opaque» because yes, you can see my writ­ing on the oppo­site side of the leaf. It’s not dis­tract­ing and cer­tain­ly accept­able, but not as opaque as I’d prefer.

The paper is smooth and appears durable. Good pens glide across it well. There is a hint of tex­ture to it, like grav­el beneath a well-tuned sus­pen­sion. It’s enough to pro­vide a tac­tile expe­ri­ence, but it’s noth­ing that will bump you out of your seat. It’s ruled a bit wide for my taste, but that’s just a mat­ter of pref­er­ence. Com­pared to the Mead paper, this is smoother. If the claims of longevi­ty are true, this would be a good note­book for writ­ing one would want to keep for pos­ter­i­ty. I like the elas­tic band that holds the cov­er shut as well. It’s a nice touch. At ten or eleven dol­lars each, you can get three Mead com­po­si­tion books for the price, but you have to give some con­sid­er­a­tion to the his­to­ri­ans who will be read­ing your jour­nals after you’re dead.

While I remain some­what cyn­i­cal about the idea of pre­mi­um note­books, ten dol­lars instead of three or four is real­ly not bad con­sid­er­ing the paper qual­i­ty, dura­bil­i­ty, the nice extras, and sup­port­ing the econ­o­my of a coun­try where the work­ers get after­noon naps instead of a coun­try where the work­ers might avoid a beat­ing if they do a good enough job.