Christmas Books

Before the holidays, I was talking about my wishlist of a few notebook/sketchbook/art supply items. Santa came through!

I expected to receive James McElhinney’s Sketchbook Traveler book, and I wasn’t disappointed. McElhinney’s pocket size sketches are reproduced life-size, each accompanied with text about the location depicted. Additional material in the book gives some lessons about the history of travel sketching, the Hudson Valley, some technical and practical tips, and lists of resources. There are even some blank pages so you can use the book as your own travel sketchbook. It is a delightful package.

Buy on Amazon

I also received another book. This one wasn’t included on my pre-holiday list, but I posted about it back in October: Finding Dora Maar. I am excited to read more about how the author happened to buy Dora Maar’s old Hermes address book on eBay, and then traced her life history. Alas, there are no illustrations other than the cover image. But you can see a couple of photos in my blog post.

Buy on Amazon

The December 2020 Conjunction

Saturn and Jupiter aren’t the only things intersecting in unusual ways this year. For me, I’m having a notebook conjunction, where my 4 daily use notebooks are all ending almost at the same time!

First off, two of them are 2020 Nolty planners, so it’s not unexpected that I’d finish using both of those at the end of this year. But my current sketchbook (old stock Moleskine) is down to its last pages, as is my current journal (Bindewerk Linen Flex Cover Journal).

It would be nice to start 4 fresh, new notebooks on January 1, 2021, but it won’t quite work out that way. I will be scribbling enough that I’ll finish my journal today. But unless I start drawing at a faster than usual pace, my sketchbook will probably last a few days into January. Pretty close, though!

You are probably wondering what’s next in my rotation. The 2020 Nolty Gold Efficiency Notebook will be replaced with the exact same thing for 2021. Same with the Moleskine sketchbook. But the Nolty Daily book isn’t available for 2021. And though I do have several Bindewerk spares, I don’t feel like using another one right now. I think I’m going to use one of my undated Nolty notebooks. I don’t think I’ll stick to the page-a-day habit I kept up this year with the Daily Book. Some of those pages weren’t that interesting, and it felt like there was too much overlap with what I was writing in my journal. I will still try to write something every day, but I won’t force it to be a single page. Some days it might just be a few lines, and some days it might be multiple pages.

Three notebooks at once instead of four is probably a better routine for me. But I’m sure it will still be quite rare to have them all ending at once!

What I Want for Christmas!

Here’s a few things I discovered over the past few weeks, at least one of which I think might be under my Christmas tree already. The rest will be purchased with a gift card I just received!

J.M.W. Turner: The Wilson Sketchbook

This looks like a lovely facsimile sketchbook to add to my collection. Turner was an amazing artist and even his casual sketches are so powerful. (Read more about Turner’s sketchbooks.)

Buy on Amazon

Remarkable Diaries: The World’s Greatest Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, & Letters

This just came out in September 2020 and I don’t know how I missed hearing about it until just a couple of weeks ago! The cover alone makes me droooool. Looks like it would be a great addition to my shelf of books about sketchbooks and notebooks!

Buy on Amazon

Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

This is what I’m pretty sure I’ll receive as a Christmas gift, as I basically ordered my partner to get it for me! It’s a new book by James Lancel McElhinney, who I wrote about in this post. I love his landscape sketchbook paintings!

Buy on Amazon

Escoda Travel Brush Set

I saw that James McElhinney uses these, and I’ve seen other artists mention them online. I don’t need any more brushes, and they’re expensive, with this $60 set being the cheapest. But that cool leather case makes me covet them…

Buy on Amazon

You can find these and many other art supplies and books about notebooks and sketchbooks in my Amazon storefront. Happy last-minute holiday shopping!

Rodin’s Notebook

A lovely image of a notebook that belonged to Rodin. I found this on the website of an auction house, where it was sold for over 20,000 Euros. A little out of my price range! I guess I’ll have to stick to eBay for buying notebooks that belonged to artists!

See the original image and description (in French) at Les Collections Aristophil

Lost or Stolen Darwin Notebooks

Such an odd story… they announced last week that two of Darwin’s notebooks must have been stolen, after being missing for 20 years. Imagine a library so big that it takes them 20 years to decide for sure if something is just misplaced or definitely not there at all!

Twenty years ago, two historic notebooks belonging to the renowned naturalist Charles Darwin were found missing from the archives at Cambridge University Library. The tiny books recorded Darwin’s thoughts after he returned to England from his famed voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, as he grasped toward ideas that would form the foundations of modern evolutionary biology.

Now, the library has said it believes the notebooks were most likely stolen, and it launched a public appeal for any information about their whereabouts on Tuesday. The local police say they have asked Interpol to place the items on its Stolen Works of Arts Register.
The library, which houses the largest collection of Darwin’s writings, has described the missing notebooks as “priceless” but nevertheless estimated their value at “millions of pounds.”

Read more: Two Darwin Notebooks, Missing for Decades, Were Most Likely Stolen

1898 Agenda Notebook

For years, I’ve wanted to find an example of the original “carnets moleskine” that existed for many decades before the capital-M Moleskine brand was founded. It’s difficult to research online, as the capital-M notebooks dominate the results if you try to search any related terms. I wrote about it in a blog post a few years ago, when I actually did find an image of one of Picasso’s small notebooks.

In doing some digging on eBay, I happened to find this lovely 1898 agenda notebook, and I was very excited, because it looks exactly like the Picasso notebook I had blogged about. I had also seen a similar notebook in a museum, I think belonging to Matisse. Perhaps the notebooks used by those famous artists were more often this design, rather than the black faux-leather covers so common today?

The cover is a woven fabric, with stitched edges reinforced with a faux-leather. It has an elastic closure. Inside, the endpapers are marbled, and in the back, there’s an expanding pocket. There is also a pen loop and red page edges, and the size is smaller than today’s usual standard for pocket notebooks, but it hits all the basic design elements that Moleskine later imitated. The paper inside is squared, except for a couple of signatures at the back.

Only one page at the beginning is unprinted. Then there is a page listing saints’ names for each day of the first 6 months of the year. The rest of the saints appear on a page at the back of the book. There must have been some printing reason for splitting them up.

Then the pages have dates printed, 4 days per page. The printing is kind of crooked, almost as if someone hand-stamped each page. In the back there is a page for each month, with the days listed line by line. Then there are a few pages of postal information. Finally, there is a section of information about all the prefectures and sub-prefectures in each department of France, with details on their distance from Paris, populations figures, and dates of fairs and markets. The list of departments in 1898 is slightly different from today’s, for instance still including Algeria, which was at the time a colony of France. Today, Paris is its own department, but it used to be the prefecture of the Seine department. The population was 1,955,295, and that’s all they have to say about Paris. But the sub-prefecture of Sceaux is noted to have “every Monday, renowned cattle market that rivals the one in Poissy.”

This notebook was barely used. Someone jotted a few numbers on the blank page at the beginning, and used the December page to write a list of words. At first glance, I thought it might be a shopping list, or a business person’s list of products for sale, since some of the words were basic items like “gasoline” and “oil.”

Reading more closely, some of the words seemed to be colors, and then I noticed “varnish,” “brushes,” and some terms I had to look up, which seemed to relate to architectural motifs and framing. “Essence” could mean “turpentine” rather than “gasoline,” and “Ripolin” is a brand of paint, so I realized that this notebook must have belonged to an artist! The Wikipedia entry for Ripolin even says that Picasso was known to have used that brand. Maybe I have an actual Picasso small-M carnet moleskine! (Which would have been even more exciting that buying Dora Maar’s address book on eBay!) I rather doubt it, especially as Picasso first went to Paris in 1900, but I suppose it could have belonged to some artist who moved in the same circles as Picasso and Matisse. Whoever it belonged to, I’m glad I have this fascinating notebook in my collection!

Notebooks Under Glass

I thought this was quite an intriguing presentation of an artist’s sketchbooks– though perhaps frustrating, as you’d want to be able to see more! It’s from an installation of artworks by Antonio Marras, who is best known as a fashion designer.

Installation view of Nulla dies sine linea, 2016, at the Triennale Museum

He may have made a name for himself as a fashion designer, but the Sardinia-born and -based Antonio Marras also possesses a less widely celebrated talent as a visual artist – although he hasn’t exactly hidden this side gig, having previously illustrated prints for his collections. During each Salone del Mobile, his Milanese showroom is filled with the creative installations that he produces in collaboration with other artists, yet Marras’ full body of work has never been exhibited – until now.

Read more: Antonio Marras shares his rich artistic oeuvre for the first time

Chris Wilkinson’s Sketchbooks

I stumbled across an old article from Wallpaper about a 2015 exhibition of the sketchbooks of British architect Chris Wilkinson, at the Royal Academy. Looks like it must have been a very interesting show! Here is an image from one of Chris Wilkinson’s sketchbooks:

chris wilkinson's sketchbooks

I also love this image of his pile of sketchbooks. Almost uniform in format, all dated on the spine.

chris wilkinson's sketchbooks pile

For a unique insight into an architect’s mind, peek into their sketchbook. Ever since the first architect scribbled the outline of a building on the first napkin, architects’ sketchpads have been more than just a blank page to draw; they are places to lay down thoughts and develop projects, keepers of trade secrets, visual notebooks and compilations of inspiration.

Happily, a book was published to accompany the exhibition: The Sketchbooks of Chris Wilkinson. I think I’ll have to add it to my collection of books about sketchbooks! (See many more books about sketching, journaling and artists’ facsimile sketchbooks in my Amazon lists here and here.)

chris wilkinson's sketchbooks book

Read more: Drawing board: a new RA show offers a peek into Chris Wilkinson’s sketchbooks

New Job, New Notebook

Over the last couple of years, I haven’t had a full time job. But when I did have one, my life was full of meetings where I took notes in notebooks, calls during which I doodled in notebooks, and responsibilities that forced me to write long to-do lists in notebooks. I tended to use larger format notebooks such as a Grandluxe A4 notebook/folder that I loved, a large Doane Paper idea journal that was also a favorite, and an Appointed notebook that was very pleasing even though I would have preferred it to have full size 8.5 x 11″ paper.

When I left my last job, I mostly stopped using this kind of larger notebook. I even — gasp– threw away the Grandluxe and Doane Paper notebooks when I cleaned out my desk. I kept the Appointed one, since I had only used about half of it. It is still around and has come in handy from time to time. I used it most recently to jot some notes in preparation for a job interview. I guess it worked well, because I got the job and I’m now going to be working full time from home.

Having a “real” job again will force me to change my organizational habits. I currently keep a running to-do list in my Nolty planner, which I supplement with other short term task lists in my general purpose notebook/journal, currently a Bindewerk linen cover dot grid notebook. This routine works fine for personal tasks and notes, but there isn’t much room to spare in these pocket size notebooks.

It’s too soon to know exactly how things will play out in terms of what kinds of notes I’ll need to take and how I’ll need to structure my workflow, but I’m sure I’ll need to dedicate a notebook to this new job. If I’m on a phone call, I’ll need a larger lay-flat notebook to scribble notes more easily. Since I’ll be working from home, I’ll be in front of my computer the whole time, so I could potentially try to take notes by typing. But that is more screen time and more typing time– I think I’ll stick to my old method of jotting things by hand. At my old job I got a lot of letter size meeting handouts, and liked to be able to tuck them into my notebook. Working remotely will mean meetings are paperless, so I don’t think I’ll need to worry about that. Since my desk at home isn’t huge, a smaller notebook might make sense, as long as it lies flat. Something with a cover that folds all the way around would be ideal, so I don’t have to make room for a fully opened double page spread.

So I need a notebook that is at least 6 x 9″ or so, with a wire-o or spiral binding. Graph paper would be ideal. But narrow ruled would also work. The Appointed notebook would be fine, but it only has a few pages left it in so I’d rather start fresh. You’d think I’d have a bazillion notebooks I could use, such as the really nice Hamelin notebooks I reviewed last year, but I seem to have given away everything that meets this description except for one: this wire-o notebook from Printfresh. (See my Printfresh notebooks review from March 2019.)

I actually think this Printfresh notebook will be great. The paper works well with my typical gel ink pens. It even has a little folder in the front where I can tuck loose sheets. The cover is sturdy enough to support the notebook if I end up using it on my lap instead of on my desk. So I think I’m all set for my new job with this new notebook, for however long its 160 pages last.

I’m kind of disappointed I won’t have that new job experience of going to the supply closet and stocking up on office supply goodies. But on the other hand, I’ve mostly bought my own favorite pens and notebooks for many years, so I guess all I’m missing out on are the Post-Its and paper clips!

Nigel Shafran’s Notebooks

Photographer Nigel Shafran‘s “Work Books” were exhibited in 2018 as the first show at a new London gallery, Sion and Moore. Here’s a few photos from a Wallpaper article about the show:

Rather than present the photographs he is celebrated for, the work books – part sketchbook, part diary – give a deeper, more intimate view to the artist’s practice. The arrangement of his observations and notes, with labels and annotations, is one recurrent feature.

Read more: Sion and Moore’s inaugural show of Nigel Shafran’s work books

Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…