Midori’s Traveler’s Notebooks are so widely popular, they seem to be almost the only Midori products you ever hear about. But they also make this lovely line of spiral notebooks named after animals (and an insect). From the descriptions at the Miscellaneous online store: Midori Spiral Ring Notebook is a series of notebooks with a … Continue reading Midori Spiral Ring Notebooks
Here’s an exciting item to be my first review of 2014: I’d heard about the Hobonichi Planner on a few other notebook sites, so I was very happy when their US marketing person contacted me to offer a sample for review. 2014 is the first year they’ve done an English-translated version of this planner, which … Continue reading Review: Hobonichi Techo Planner 2014
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 … Continue reading Review: Paper Republic Notebook
Beautiful… Via A Paper Bear Art Journal Tumblr | Japanese notebook. Found here..
JetPens is renowned as a fabulous source of, well, pens… but they also stock a lot of great notebooks too. Brad at Jet Pens was kind enough to send me some samples for review– let’s take a look! These 3 notebooks are give a first impression of sleekness, somehow. The covers are smooth, and they … Continue reading Review: Kokuyo and Maruman Notebooks from Jet Pens
Here’s a look at a couple of notebooks I couldn’t resist buying at Kinokuniya, a store in Manhattan that specializes in books, movies, stationery and other Japanese items. The first is a quite unique notebook, made by Pilot and branded “THE-II” on the front. The cover is a very retro leather-textured plastic: But here’s what … Continue reading Review: Japanese Notebooks from Kinokuniya
Here’s a new brand of notebooks from Japan that I hadn’t heard of before, available at Need Supply Co. I like the stripped-down, utilitarian look. Found via StreetLevel.com. (Also spotted at Uncrate.com, via The Pen Addict)
I thought I’d share a few photos from some notebook shopping trips around NYC over the past few months. These were furtively snapped with my cell phone, so I apologize in advance for the image quality. The first few pictures were taken at McNally Jackson Bookstore in the SoHo/NoLIta area of NYC. It’s a fabulous … Continue reading Sneak Peaks from the Secret Shopper
These are just gorgeous! This set of eight books is a treasure. The books are the journals of a kasuri weaver/dyer from Omi, an area of Japan (present-day Shiga Prefecture) which produced some of Japan’s finest hemp and ramie kasuri textiles, known as Omi jofu. The books date from 1859 through the beginning of last … Continue reading 19th Century Notebooks From a Japanese Dyeworks
One of the best things about writing this blog is that I’ve been getting some nice emails from readers with photographs of notebooks. Here’s a few: Carol sends this HUGE notebook: And Jan sends this tiny one, bought in Holland: And Jun shares these photos of a very covetable Japanese surveyor’s notebook: If you have … Continue reading From the Collections of Our Readers