Clairefontaine 1951 Clothbound Notebooks

[azkid]

When I first got into the fountain pen hobby about a year ago, an A5 sized, clothbound, Back to Basics 1951 notebook from Clairefontaine was my first accessory purchase.

I've subsequently gone through two of these 96-sheet, college ruled notebooks while testing pens and inks and am working on a third such journal of experimentation. So, it is high time I post up a review.

Clairefontaine, a French paper company, makes these notebooks with their fantastic Papier Velouté at a very reasonable cost versus other premium notebooks.

The A5 size runs around $7-10 and the notebooks come in several pleasant colors including a dark grey, turquoise, royal blue, dark blue, orange, lime green, fuschia, and probably others I'm unaware of.

Papier Velouté is a crisp white and smooth, offering a pleasant, gliding feeling even for nibs with considerable feedback, low flow, and inks lacking lubrication. Nibs always seem to feel best on this above other papers I have tried. In fact, I get a false sense of success testing nibs I have attempted to tune and smooth until I try them on lesser paper!

Inks tend to dry more quickly, too, often an indicator of absorbency. Yet the paper also resists feathering for nearly all of the most feather-prone inks I have tested.

The 90gsm weight is very resistant to show-through and bleed-through except for a few cases with an extremely dark ink and overly wet pen.

Also noteworthy is that my dip pens, usually needlepoint Esterbrook 048 pens (I don't do calligraphy) work wonderfully in these notebooks with Speedball black.



The binding and cardboard has held up to months-long use. The spine will tend to arch during that time and the cardboard isn't thick enough to totally prevent curling but they close well enough, for me at least, by the end of their use.

Also, thanks to the cloth binding, the notebooks open wide and flat without breaking the spine which makes it easier to write on both sides of the page.

In all these are outstanding notebooks at an acceptable price and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a soft bound, lined notebook.