The Well-Appointed Desk

I was recently introduced to a notebook company with a pretty long history called Dingbats*. The company was started in the early 19th century in Lebanon and has been passed down to the current great-great grandsons who have brought the business into the 21st century with a very interesting line of products. I got to try out their Elephant notebook in their Wildlife line, an A5+ (6.3×8.5″) with a textured leatherette cover and a debossed elephant in the center of the cover. The notebook has an elastic closure, ribbon bookmark and a gusseted pocket in the back for loose papers. There’s even an elastic pen loop that was stretchy enough to fit my Aurora Optima though it was a bit of a tight squeeze.

The end papers have a paw print pattern printed on a butter yellow color stock. There is a place for your personal information of the inside front page in case of loss. I like that the note at the bottom just says “please return to me” rather than Moleskine’s reward line. Its much altruistic.

Inside, the paper is 100gsm cream, acid-free, FSC-certified paper with a total of 96 sheets or 192 pages. I received a dot grid notebook and the dots are spaced at 5mm. The dots are printed in grey and are smaller than the dots in my Baron Fig notebooks but the grey is a shade or two darker. There are also grid, lined and blank paper options available if dot gird is not your catnip.

Every single page is micro-perforated as well. I didn’t notice the micro perforations at first until I was flipping to the last few pages where most notebooks include a few pages with micro-perf. Then I flipped through and noticed that all the pages were perfed. With very careful folding along the perforation, I was able to cleanly remove a page from the middle of the book.

The sewn binding allows the notebook to lay flat with no issues. Easy peasy. I almost forgot to mention it because, to me, with a bound notebook, this should be a no-brainer and should only be mentioned when notebooks don’t lay flat. But lat’s all cheer that the Dingbats* notebook does its job beautifully.

The Dingbats* notebook completely lived up to its claim that it was fountain-pen friendly. I had no issues with my daily carry fine and extra-fine nib fountain pens. I also tested an assortment felt tip pens, pencils and whatever I had laying around to get a varied perspective. Everything performed well, dried in a resonable amount of time and had no feathering issues. I, on the other hand, had some unique spelling issues today. No judgement. I must have been particularly tired.

From the back of my ink testing page, there was almost no show through at all and even the beefy Plumchester 1.5 brush pen had little show through.

When my husband saw the Dingbats* notebook, he really liked it as well. He’s not the stationery enthusiast that a lot of us are so I’m always pleased when a notebook or pen turns his head. He particularly liked the feel of the leatherette cover. And both of us enjoyed perusing the small pamphlet included with the notebook of other products offered by Dingbats*. Some of the products we really liked were the School Agenda with tri-language and the Personal Agenda available in English-Arabic. In the current cultural environment, I like knowing that students and adults in the US could get an Agenda that had Arabic featured. I do hope Dingbats* will offer these Agendas in the US market for 2018.

The Dingbats Company also has a strong environmental policy and include information on their web site and promotional materials about their dedication to keeping their paper making as clean to the environment as possible.

I really like the Wildlife series notebooks. They are good quality with all the right features, great paper, and a competitive price point. If you’re looking for a bound notebook alternative to what you are using right now, Dingbats* might be your next new notebook. Fingers crossed, next edition added will be a panda?

DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Dingbats* for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

Manuscript Notebooks is a company that specializes in notebooks with a literary bent. They offer Large (A5), pocket (passport) and hardcover (pocket-sized) notebooks featuring classic literature covers.

The covers are a matte finish coated stock rather than the uncoated paper used by a lot of other companies giving it a slightly more durable feel. On the inside cover is a “table of contents” but because its printed on the coated paper stock it would be difficult to used with anything other than a ballpoint pen. It is a clever design but not entirely useful.

The spines feature a sewn binding rather than a staple stitch. I like the look of this and is a nice alternative that seems in keeping with the vintage vibe of the book covers rather than a more utilitarian staple.

Since I keep an A5-sized Traveler’s Notebook as well as my 5th Anniversary Edition Star Ferry Traveler’s Notebook, Manuscript’s two standard cahier sizes perfectly meet my needs. Not to mention, I have a certain penchant for books. So I had my fingers crossed that the paper quality would be good…

I pulled out a good array of “everyday carry” tools to put the paper to the test.  According to my contact at Manuscript, the Large A5 and the hardcover journals both contain 75gsm post-consumer ivory cream paper. The paper in the passport-sized pocket notebooks is blank 85gsm post-consumer. The hardcover journals are the only books with white paper and ruled pages.

In my initial tests, everything looked good with standard testing. I didn’t drench the paper, though I did throw the Plumchester 1.5 brush pen in at the end just for a challenge. I did pepper it with standard fine and medium fountain pens, some fine italics, a Papermate Flair and the standard general writers like a Pilot G2 and Sharpie Pen.

In a more close-up shot, you can see that I didn’t get any bleeding, feathering or splining of the ink. I’m very happy to report that there was also minimal show through as well, even with the great big, juicy brush pen, though there was a bit with that one. That was to be expected though.

There are 86 pages in each of the A5 notebooks so there’s plenty of doodling and writing space for the $11 price tag.  The Pocket notebooks are sold in packs of 3 for $11, each with 48 pages so they are priced competitively with many of the other notebooks currently on the market. While I did not get to test the heavier 85 gsm paper in the Pocket notebooks, if its the same stock as is featured in the A5, only slightly heavier, I think it will be excellent.

Manuscript is also introducing the Manuscript Crate. Each month Manuscript Crate will send a set of Pocket notebooks with a different literary cover art, such as Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, and many more. The literature will span all genres and international editions. Sometimes the cover art will be instantly recognizable, and sometimes they will be obscure limited run covers printed a long time ago in far away places. But every month will be a surprise. Right now, they’re giving away $10 gift cards towards your crate purchase to the first 500 people that sign up for Manuscript Crate. The monthly fee for each Crate will be $10 and shipping will be around $2. So the $10 gift basically gives you a free month. Manuscript is also hoping to include some surprise extras in their crates like stickers, bookmarks and miniatures pencils.

It looks like there is Manuscript is another source for good quality A5 and pocket notebooks if you don’t mind blank pages. Since you can use guide sheets, that shouldn’t be a make-or-break issue. And if you like pocket-sized books, the subscription service might be a good option as well.

DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Manuscript Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.