I had heard of Lee Lozano but didn’t really know much about her until reading this article in The Brooklyn Rail about the publication of her notebooks. I was inspired to purchase two volumes of the notebooks (Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 are available on Amazon) out of curiosity about their contents, and also because … Continue reading Lee Lozano’s Notebooks in Facsimile Editions
I used a few of these little planners when I was in college in the late 1980s. In the photo below, which includes some of my other planners from that time, you can see a black and brown Uncalendar, and the red one in the top left with a post-it on top is also an … Continue reading 1980s Uncalendar Planner
I absolutely loved this blog post– one man’s tale of developing the habit of writing in old diaries and journals, including original small-m moleskines, their modern brand name replacements, and the Boots Scribbling Diaries I mentioned in this post. Quoted at length, but please do check out the rest of the original blog post, by … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Notebook Nostalgia
Here’s another old-time favorite of mine: These are pocket sized notebooks made by Boorum & Pease and Esselte in the 1980s, with lined pages and a textured black hard cover. I look at these now and see them as a sort of proto-Moleskine. I was always looking for a nice “little black book,” in a … Continue reading Boorum & Pease/Esselte Black Notebooks
A reader recently wrote to me with the following question: “I have been looking for a particular kind of notebook for quite some time. I see them more in movies than anything, and examples include JFK and the most recent Captain America movie (see pic below). It’s very similar to the one you have posted … Continue reading Boorum and Pease Brown Taped-Spine Notebook
This is just a small part of an article in which Paul Zahl talks about the movie Super 8: Recently I came across ten little notebooks, notebooks for a person’s breast pocket, which I used for my to-do lists during the Winter and Spring of 1972-1973. I was a recent college graduate and quite confused, … Continue reading Old Roaring Spring Notebooks
I love seeing artist’s notebooks, especially ones like this with notes about how the artist is working out an idea as opposed to just sketches. Below is a journal page by David Wojnarowicz, a controversial artist who died of AIDS in 1992. (If you want to learn more about him and the 1980s East Village … Continue reading David Wojnarowicz’s Journals
Here’s a few things I pulled out of one of my storage boxes, about half of which is filled with childhood notebooks from the late ’70s to mid-’80s. First, a small orange looseleaf notebook. I was probably in about 6th grade when I decided to devote it to Astronomy and colored the cover with a … Continue reading Random Notebooks from My Collection
Here’s a notebook that I liked so much, I had to buy three of them. I still love the concept of these: the look of a composition book in a different size. I’ve always loved the black and white patterned covers of the traditional composition book, but I have not usually wanted to use something … Continue reading Early 1980s “Comp” Pocket Memo Notebooks
This notebook is one of the gems of my collection because I’ve never seen anything else quite like it. I must have bought this in the early 80s, at one of the various five-and-ten stores in my area. It’s just a generic mass-produced notebook. But this cover just fascinates me! There is something so weird … Continue reading An Unusual 1980s Spiral Notebook