The Maruman Glyphy notebook line is a new offering that hasn't quite hit US shelves yet, but you should see it arriving soon. Like all new notebook options, everyone's first question is usually something along the lines of "what kind of paper does it have, and does it work well with all types of pens and pencils?" Maruman might be most known in the US for producing the luxurious Mnemosyne notebooks — which are incredibly well-made and perform quite admirably. Does the new Glyphy match up to the high bar that Maruman have set?
The Glyphy comes in two sizes, but I have the B6 size (175x144mm) with 60 gsm art (blank) paper (the other size options is A6). There are 88 pages in the glue-bound, hard-cover notebook, and they are fairly thin. There's a prominent texture on the page that reminds me how fancy cotton resume paper looks, except this paper is incredibly thin and doesn't behave like thick absorbent paper. Unfortunately, this paper suffers from a pretty significant amount of feathering and show-through. It's certainly not unusable due to this, but you do have to be careful about which pens/inks you use with the notebook. As you can see in the writing samples, similar pen/ink combos work better than others. I attribute this to the ink characteristics more than anything, but I'd certainly test a pen with this notebook before writing for any significant amount of time. With many pen/ink combos, the back of the page is unusable (for me, anyway).
Does that mean you should avoid this notebook? I don't think so. It works great for gel and ballpoint pens, and I've really enjoyed using it with pencils. The paper texture reminds me of sketchbooks, and I think that's really how it's going to be marketed when it hits the shelves in the North American region. It takes graphite marks really well and provides a satisfying amount of feedback due to the paper texture. This is mostly due to the paper being uncoated (and also why it suffers from feathering).
The cover of the notebook is nicely done. It's a fabric cover that has a nice tactile feel, a solid binding, and opens and closes easily. The only branding is on the top right corner of the notebook — a bold white "Glyphy" to announce the name, but it's also quite helpful in determining which way is right-side up before opening it. I love it when manufacturers decide to take a minimal route when it comes to branding their products. They Maruman Glyphy does an excellent job at producing a strong aesthetic appeal without needless and excessive graphic art additions.
The B6 size isn't one that I use very often. Every time I do, I feel foolish for not using it more often. It really is a perfect size for a lot of what I do. It fits into places easier than an A5, but you really aren't sacrificing much in the way of paper real estate. If it were just 30mm shorter, it would be square. It's a fantastic size, and the hard cover will protect the pages from a lot of abuse.
Once the Maruman Glyphy notebooks are widely available, I encourage you to try them out. I'm really interested to try out the other paper type options to see if they handle fountain pens inks differently than this particular variant. According to the Maruman product catalog, the other versions have either 90 gsm or 126 gsm paper, with blank or grid formatting, so it should be interesting to compare all of the options.
(Maruman provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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