He has preserved much of what he went through with the Beatles in diaries, which he has kept since the “Ready Steady Go!” years.
He led me to a bookcase in the memento-filled library next to his art studio. It was filled with dusty leather-bound diaries, many overstuffed with letters and photos. At my suggestion, he dug out the volume from 1969. It was curiously slender.
He thumbed through the pages and landed on January 30, the blustery day in London when the Beatles played in public for the last time. As captured by Mr. Lindsay-Hogg and his team, their swan-song performance was the climax of both “Let It Be” and “Get Back.”
The diary page was blank, except for one word scribbled in black ballpoint pen.
Roof.
“The busier you are,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said, “the less you write down.”
I’m sure there’s a lot of other interesting material in those diaries! They look to be bound in an interesting way, as if they are designed to be more of a scrapbook or album, with extra room for stuff to be pasted in. But Mr. Lindsay-Hogg seems to have used up all that room and more! Those diaries look super-stuffed!
I happened to notice an Instagram post from Printed Matter about a facsimile book of artist Jimbo Blachly’s notebooks. (Available on the Printed Matter website.)
The activity of drawing is primary to Jimbo Blachly’s work. In addition to individual drawings and watercolors, he has kept daily notebooks and sketchbooks which make up a large visual diary going back decades. Blachly states: “The responsiveness of line and mark making to the fluidity of thought. The economy of means-ink and reed pen or pencil and the compact portability of small notebooks means I am almost never without the ability to draw or make a quick notation in my day-to-day life. Drawing for me is a mirror, reflecting the relationship between the perceiving mind, the hand and the myriad phenomena be it oak leaves, mosquitoes, memories or burning forests ”
–Jimbo Blachly statement, jimboblachly.com
Blachly has been keeping 3.5 x 5.5″ notebooks for years, according to his website. I was sorry to see that the facsimile book is slightly larger, so not really a true facsimile. I still might have to buy a copy. I like the look of the drawings– interesting colors, abstract but sort of based on cityscapes and landscapes.
I’d love to see some of Jimbo Blachly’s notebooks in person. Unfortunately it looks like he cut up some of the sketchbooks to exhibit the drawings and sell them separately. I guess an artist has to do what he’s gotta do, but that always makes me sad!
I took screenshots of these wonderful notebook images about a month ago. I think they are from a book about the French film director François Truffaut, but I somehow managed to lose track of the link back to the page where I found the images. If anyone recognizes the pages, please let me know so I can properly credit the original source!
In the meantime, while searching around for online images of Truffaut’s notebooks, I also came across the image below, from a blog called Mon Cahier du Cinéma à Moi. It’s apparently a childhood notebook of Truffaut’s, with the comment below saying that the young Truffaut preferred to spend time sitting in a movie theater seat rather than on a school bench.
I don’t know what took me so long. They’re not that hard to find, and they certainly aren’t expensive. This notebook only cost me $3.00 at Yoseka Stationery‘s lovely store in Greenpoint.
I love the design, which looks classic and timeless. The format is a typical single signature exercise book, with a taped spine. I notice that the spine tape wraps further around on the front than on the back– it’s deliberate, but I wonder why?
On the inside front cover, there is some text, all in Japanese. Then you get to the lovely bright paper. It’s lined with dots that can be used to guide vertical lines.
The paper works well with all fountain pens. Even flexing nibs with significant pressure produced no problems. Only the Accu-liner and Super Sharpie bled.
What’s not to love? It’s a nice looking $3.00 notebook that performs extremely well. I could only wish that they made a 3.5 x 5.5″ version with unlined paper!
In this past weekend’s New York Times there is an article about the new Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK, where all his archives are stored.
The collection includes a variety of artifacts, including Bob Dylan’s notebook shown below, in which he made notes for lyrics, many of which evolved into the final version known in his songs.
I recently went to the Morgan Library in New York City, primarily to see the Holbein exhibition that’s currently being shown there. (Well worth seeing and it closes soon, so go if you can!) The Morgan is also currently showing an exhibition about Woody Guthrie, which happens to feature quite a few notebooks!
This composition book was the first thing that caught my eye. It was mounted in case next to one of Guthrie’s Gibson guitars.
Here’s a couple more, including a spiral notebook with one of Guthrie’s comic sketches, and an address book from the 1940s, open to a page listing the blues musician Lead Belly and Alan Lomax, who is known for recording, archiving, and popularizing American folk music.
A daily diary in which Guthrie wrote to his unborn daughter:
A spiral notebook recording things said by Guthrie’s daughter Cathy at the age of 4. Sadly, Cathy died in a fire later than year.
Another daily diary in a larger format, in which Guthrie mused about love and sex:
There were lots of other interesting artifacts in the exhibit. I had seen images of some of Woody Guthrie’s notes and sketches before but had no idea he was such a prolific notebook-keeper!
This week’s addict is chamo_san, an artist from Barcelona who I’ve been following on Instagram. A lot of the work he shares is done in sketchbooks, and they all look rather lovely piled up like this!
The work he’s creating inside them is quite stunning too! Here’s just a sampling:
I was browsing eBay recently and came across a very odd Moleskine planner. I searched for it on Moleskine’s own site but found nothing. The only other listing I found was at Target:
This is so weird. To be honest, I thought at first that it was someone’s idea of a joke to Photoshop together a really stupid looking fake Moleskine product (which I am not above doing myself). But Target actually shows this product as being in stock in one of their stores, so I guess it’s real.
The product description says the covers are made with special paper (and yes, the typo is in the original):
FAVINI PAPER – SUSTAINABILIY AND INNOVATION Made in Italy: the planner’s covers are made from innovative Crush and Remake paper by Favini. Based in northern Italy and tracing its history to 1736, Favini is a leading global producer of natural, fiber-based materials. Remake is made using up-cycled leather residues, while Crush is produced using residues from organic products.
I suppose I could imagine something uglier if I tried, but I don’t want to. The whole concept looks like a patchwork of features from other journals you’d find in Target, or a Hallmark store or the checkout lane at HomeGoods. Gold modern calligraphy? With a ring binding that looks like it’s made of cork? These things aren’t ugly per se, but it’s like they’ve been patched in from a different design universe, and the way this all comes together with Moleskine’s branding looks terrible, at least in my opinion.
Moleskine used to have a very particular brand identity and aesthetic, but they seem to be going far astray.
Shocking news from a publishing industry newsletter:
Sen. Ted Cruz Slams Blank Book Sales for ‘Potentially Offensive Content’
Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Tex.) took his crusade against books he deems objectionable to a new level this week when he warned against the dangers of selling diaries, journals and other blank books to minors.
Just days after ranting about the threat posed by anti-racist literature at Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing, Cruz turned his attention to the potential hazards inherent in blank books sold by retailers nationwide, from bookshops and stationery stores to big-box retailers like Walmart.
In a speech to constituents, Cruz said, “What many people don’t know is that absolutely anything could be written in those pages. We must protect our kids from their own thoughts.” To drive his point home, Cruz displayed a stack of personal diaries that his staff had discovered in their own children’s possession.
A spokesperson for the National Stationery Association commented: “Senator Cruz’s words speak for themselves. As has happened with other books and related items he’s criticized in the past, dramatically increased sales will be the result. We wholeheartedly support that outcome.” —Robert Gray
From Shelf Awareness
I loved it so much I had to repost the whole thing! Happy April Fools Day everyone!
I’m a fan of Paperblanks notebooks. I own several of them but I had never actually used one until quite recently, when I decided to bite the bullet and try using a Paperblanks Flexis notebook as a daily journal.
I’ve been coveting these notebooks for a while– there are some very cool cover designs, and I liked the idea of the flexi binding, which is a nice compromise between the sturdiness of a hardcover and the flexibility and lightness of a softcover. The current line of Flexis notebooks was introduced within the last few years, but I realized my oldest Paperblanks notebook, from their Old Leather collection, has a similar cover. Its cover slightly thinner, and seems to be and underlying board wrapped with a smooth paper on which the design is printed, unlike the new Flexis, which have a single or double layer cover on which the design is directly printed/debossed, from what I can see.
The Old Leather notebook is referred to as a “Back Pocket Flexi,” as it has a Moleskine-style expanding back pocket. The current Flexis just have a little paper tuck pocket that won’t hold very much beyond a couple of business cards. Otherwise the Flexis are pretty similar to most of my other Paperblanks notebooks– I love the marbled page edges and tightly rounded corners. (My older ones have plain white edges, and while the Old Leather has widely rounded corners, the Via Romana has squared corners.)
I have to just stop here and say that it took me a while to figure out whether these notebooks are Paperblanks Flexis, as in plural of Flexi, and thereby pronounced Flex-ees, or whether Flexis itself was the name of the product line, pronounced Flex-iss. My Old Leather said “Flexi” but beyond that, it took me a while to dig into their website far enough to find a reference to Flexi in the singular, so I guess it is one Flexi, two Flex-ees.
I bought my two Flex-ees at an independent bookstore in Delaware that always has a lovely display of Paperblanks, and even better, usually has a good representation of unlined notebooks in addition to the more common lined format. I chose the Tesla and Mystique designs, in the Mini size. I was excited to start using one, so it was only a month or two after I bought it that the Mystique entered my daily arsenal. And less than 2 months later, it exited.
I wish I could say it was because I had an incredibly productive and interesting time of life which resulted in me filling more pages than usual with all my fascinating thoughts. But it was actually because I found myself not enjoying the notebook. Rather than just switch to another one, I scrawled my way through it in larger than usual handwriting, often writing on only one side of the page.
I can only point to one particular disappointment with the quality of the notebook itself. Paperblanks uses different paper weights, and when I bought these notebooks, which have different page counts, I assumed their paper weights were 80 GSM and 120 GSM, the papers found on the Paperblanks Nova Stella Solis I reviewed, and the Paperblanks Reporter notebooks I reviewed. But what I didn’t realize was that Paperblanks use not just 2 levels of paper, but at least 3! You can only find the paper weights in the descriptions on their website, not on the product itself.
My Tesla Flexis notebook has the 80 GSM paper, but my Mystique Flexis has in-between 100 GSM paper that is not as fountain pen friendly as my 120 GSM Stella Novis. The difference between the 80 GSM Tesla’s paper and the 100 GSM Mystique was pretty negligible– maybe slightly less bleed-through and show-through in the Mystique, but about the same amount of feathering. And I think the inks I tested might look a little less splotchy on the lighter paper.
Of my other Paperblanks, the Via Romana is pretty good with fountain pens, and the Old Leather is only so-so. I’ve bought these over a period of several years, so I the paper weight may not be the only difference– they seem to have slightly different textures and may be from totally different paper manufacturers. Who knows. The Nova Stella’s 120 GSM paper is really great, so I hope they still use that in some of their other notebooks!
But to be honest, I’m not sure I would have lasted longer with the Paperblanks Flexis notebook even if it had been 100% fountain pen friendly. My attitude towards notebooks is sometimes like my attitude towards clothing: I admire certain styles that look great on other people, but they just aren’t comfortable for me. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with them, it’s just an idiosyncratic personal preference. I have always gravitated towards notebooks with plain covers, mostly black, so the Paperblanks just felt a little bling-y and ornate to me– a little fancy for everyday use. Also, I really like the 3.5 x5.5″ size proportions that have become standard for many other notebook brands, so this one being a hair shorter and slightly wider just felt a little off to me. The Paperblanks website says it is 3.75 x 5.5′, which is pretty accurate, but some of my older Moleskines are actually 3-1/2 x 5-9/16″.
I still think Paperblanks is a great brand. They are well-made notebooks and the heaviest paper should make fountain pen users very happy. But I think I’ll be able to restrain myself from buying more.
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…
