The Bodoni line of notebooks from Maruman is named after Giambattista Bodoni, an Italian typographer, type-designer, printer and publisher in Parma, Italy back in the late 1700s/early 1800s. He created the Bodoni typeface, which is still used today.
From the Maruman website, “BODONI is a notebook that aims to improve skills and enrich daily life in various fields such as business scenes and lifestyles”. They come in at least 2 sizes (A5 and A4, and possibly A6) and come in Ruled (lined), Grid, and Blank. I will be reviewing the Ruled A5 Bodoni today.
Pack of 3 Maruman Bodoni A5 Notebooks. The graphic on the red tab shows that this is the Ruled notebook.
The back of the binding also indicates the type.
The notebooks are sold in a pack of 3. Each notebook comes with 40 unnumbered sheets/80 pages of 60 gsm paper. The notebook has a light cream, flexible cardstock cover, and there is a red tab on the lower left depicting the type of ruling, if any. The glue-bound paper isn’t attached to the cover on the edge which allows the notebooks to lay flat. Just for grins, I tried to tear off a sheet of the first page and it doesn’t appear to be meant for use as a paper pad. In the middle of the notebook cover is an embossed depiction of Giambattista Bodoni. It’s so subtle, it’s barely noticeable unless you’re looking at it from an angle with some light on it. I thought it was a neat touch.
The embossed image of Giambattista Bodoni. Scroll back up to see the whole front and you can easily miss this detail.
The interior binding of the notebook gave the impression that it is a notepad, but pages didn’t tear out. This seems to allow it to lay flat when open.
I decided to use my currently inked pens, but didn’t bring any non-FPs to my in-laws’ house (oops, my bad.)
The 60 gsm BODONI paper is just barely off-white and has a line in the upper outer corner for the date (the Grid and Blank notebooks do not have this). The paper is quite smooth, similar to Clairefontaine or 68 gsm Tomoe River. It was quite nice to write on, if you like pretty smooth paper. It held up to almost every fountain pen ink, except one - De Atramentis Document Turquoise, which you may recall also bled through the Perpanep notebooks. I didn’t have many shimmer or sheening inks in my pens but it handled them as well as saturated and shading inks just fine.
Note: Writing samples were used on the back pages of the notebooks so I can still use them from front to back when I’m done with testing it.
48 pens’ worth of writing samples. This also shows how flat the notebook was when it was opened to the second to the last page.
Paper behaved well with a variety of pens and inks. I especially liked the shading from Robert Oster’s Rose Gilt Tynte (a shimmer ink) and Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin.
I used a fairly sharp flex nib by StyloSuite, inked up with Diamine Meadow, and the paper handled both the sharp nib and the added ink from the downward flex without any problems.
Even De Atramentis Document Turquoise looked good on the front side, but…
Flip the page over and you can tell which line had De Atramentis Document Turquoise. Two lines below, you can kind of see a dot of bleed through from where I accidentally poked the paper with the nib.
Other than noted above, there was no major ghosting and no bleedthrough with the other pens/inks.
I decided to do some writing on both sides of the paper to see if the very minimal ghosting was distracting.
I used a Platinum 3776 with a Medium nib, inked up with Diamine Havasu Turquoise for the writing.
No bleed through, minimal ghosting.
Writing on the back side.
Back to the front side and you can tell that there was writing on the back but it does not distract or interfere with the writing on the front.
Closeup of the writing on both sides.
While I personally wouldn’t use the lined notebook for swatches (because the lines are too distracting), the paper seemed to hold up just fine.
I used the steel Kakimori dip nib for this swatch of Van Dieman’s Snowy Mountain Sunset (which looks amazing and I can’t wait to ink it up), and the shimmer looks just fine.
You can definitely see that there is an ink swatch on the other side but it didn’t bleed through.
A few things to note that apply to the BODONI notebooks:
— No page numbers. I am used to notebooks and planners that have page numbers but it’s not a big deal breaker for me, especially for a notebook this thin.
— Fairly thin notebook. I almost want to call this an “insert” as opposed to a “notebook” because there aren’t many pages, but since it isn’t bound in the middle, it probably wouldn’t work well in elastic systems like Travelers or Lochby, etc. This isn’t a pro or con, just that there are only 40 sheets. I normally prefer 150-200 page notebooks but it was nice to have something thin for shorter projects or using one for studying different subjects.
— Maruman does offer the notebook with a cover as well, but I couldn’t find the cover separately.
The Maruman BODONI A5 notebooks are available for $15 for a pack of 3 from Vanness Pens, making them $5/notebook. Overall, the paper behaved well and it was really nice to write on. It was fine writing on both sides as well. I didn’t find the paper overly smooth so unless you prefer paper with a bit more tooth, you should enjoy this as well.
(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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