I usually think of artists who draw and paint as having the most beautiful notebooks and sketchbooks, but photographers keep some intriguing notebooks too: my latest “other people’s notebooks” fascination is with Diane Arbus. I’ve always found her quite interesting, since discovering her photographs when I was in high school, to more recently reading Patricia … Continue reading Diane Arbus Notebooks
The February 29th New York Times has a piece by Tess Taylor, talking about her pilgrimage to California, to visit as many places photographed by Dorothea Lange as she can. She also read Lange’s pocket notebooks, now archived at the Oakland Museum of California. Ms. Lange, best known for her Depression-era photographs of migrant laborers, … Continue reading Dorothea Lange’s Notebooks
A beautiful and colorful page from a notebook by artist Phillip March Jones. I love the idea of taking old pages of scribbly notes and turning them into vibrant works of abstract art. The artist, writer and curator Phillip March Jones almost always carries a notebook — a small Moleskine affair, just the right size to … Continue reading Phillip March Jones’s “Workbooks”
Usually, you might think a head of state would have other people do his notetaking, but in Malaysia, the Prime Minister has a habit of carrying a pocket notebook and using it! Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad always carries a small notebook with him and jots down anything that comes to mind about what members of … Continue reading Malaysia’s Prime Minister and His Notebook
Maybe this technically isn’t a notebook? But to me, if you cover your textbook in this many notes, it has basically become a notebook. This one belongs to a Japanese student who aced a world history exam by studying from these annotations. Gorgeous, isn’t it? Because if you know everything, you don’t have to worry … Continue reading Extreme Note-Taking!
Another nice example of a cook’s notebook, this time from the renowned cookbook author Paula Wolfert: Read more at: Her Memory Fading, Paula Wolfert Fights Back With Food – The New York Times
More notebooks from chefs! “Fine-art photographer Jeff Scott won the 2012 James Beard Foundation Award in the Photography category for Notes From a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession…. The book doesn’t contain any recipes, but instead aims to reveal the creative process for some of the top, young chefs in America. Shot documentary-style, Scott’s … Continue reading Chefs’ Notebooks Photographed by Jeff Scott
A commenter on a recent post asked what notebooks I was using for my business and personal notes. The notebook I was referring to in that post was a pocket-sized squared Moleskine, one of my hoard of old ones from before their quality declined so much. That is my daily catch-all notebook for journal entries, … Continue reading What I Am Using Now
Here’s a really cool item I snagged on eBay: This is an early version of the Federal Supply Service notebooks I’ve reviewed here. I don’t know when they changed the information on the back, but from googling the Government Printing Office and the Federal Supply Service, my theory is that the US government used to … Continue reading U. S. Government Printing Office Memorandum Notebook
From a lovely essay about appreciating the worn, torn, lived-in-ness of books and notebooks, the “messiness of creation”: “For about fifteen years now I have been keeping a notebook, or multiple notebooks actually, ostensibly with the intention of jotting down ideas or thoughts before they escape off into the ether. Occasionally these thoughts result in … Continue reading In Praise of Wear and Tear