(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
I purchased this notebook as a souvenir from Scriptura in New Orleans this past fall. It was irresistible, which was my only excuse for purchasing a large notebook made out of wood and metal while attempting to one-bag minimal travel. It just felt good in my hands. No regrets.
This is a hefty A5 notebook with 144 sheets (288 pages) of dot-grid paper. The cover boards are made of cherry wood with a black cloth spine and aluminum edges that run around the border of each cover board. The binding is sewn in small signatures, so the book lies flat with very little training. It is very well made, despite one stray thread that escaped the binding process on mine. That doesn't appear to have affected the quality of the binding--it's just a long, stray tail that I trimmed.
Inside the back cover is a flat diagonal folder for holding a few sheets of paper, but it has no gusset, so its capacity is limited. The cover is held shut with a black elastic band that has a lot of tension, so it lays flush against the back when not in use instead of flopping around, which makes me very happy.
There is no branding on the outside at all, though the wood cover is begging to be decorated. It's unfinished, so it would be fun to sketch on, or paint, or cover with stickers. If not, I bet the wood will age beautifully.
Inside, the book remains very minimal with only a blank endpaper before the dot-grid pages. The paper is cream colored and quite textured. It's not rough, but it has a lot of feedback , particularly when writing with very fine-point pens. The dots of the dot grid are fairly faint, so they can be ignored if needed, and the paper also has a barely-visible vertical structure to it that is best seen when held up to the light.
The paper does not bleed or feather and shows very little ghosting, even with a Sharpie. I was very impressed. I had expected some of that texture to lead to feathering, but no--this is some fantastic paper.
Bindewerk hand-makes their notebooks in Germany and this model costs around 36.70 Euros. I forget what exactly I paid for mine in New Orleans, but it was in the $30-something range. You can also pick them up from Orange Art Store in the US (the shop is affiliated with the US distributor of the brand.) I think that's a great price for the quality of the build and the generous serving of excellent paper. It was well worth the space it took up in my travel backpack.
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