The lovely sample below arrived from Vienna, where Paper Republic is based. This is an example of their Noto collection, and it’s quite an international notebook: the Chiyogami paper cover is screen-painted by hand in Japan, the pages inside are made of Swedish paper, the notebook was bound in Budapest, Hungary and then was hand-numbered in Vienna.

From the company:

“Paper Republic’s mission is to craft authentic notebooks and journals according to traditional paper-making, printing and book-binding techniques.”

I love the result– it is beautiful and unique while being classic and very simple. When I opened the package, I went “oooh…” You can tell that care has gone into the binding and assembly. The quality seems very high, and everything is tight, square, and symmetrical. I like the look of the branding, and the hand-numbering is a nice touch.

The notebook is about 3 3/4 x 5 3/4″, just slightly bigger than a pocket Moleskine.

The paper inside is smooth, but with a very slight tooth to it. All my usual pens worked well, with fountain pens showing a bit more saturated color than they do on some other papers. Some of the wetter pens feathered out a little bit, but bleed-through was a bit better than average, and show-through about average.

I hope these notebooks will be making their way to some stores in the U.S. soon, but in the meantime, the Paper Republic website is offering free shipping worldwide. Other gorgeous cover designs are available, as well as a larger size. The small Noto notebooks are €14.95, which is a bit steep at the current conversion of about $19.95 USD, but for something of this quality, including shipping from Europe, it doesn’t seem outrageous. It’s nice to see a new notebook brand that pays such attention to detail and features such unusual, beautiful designs.