I’ve been seeing Moglea notebooks in upscale gift stores and museum shops for a while. The hand painted covers are colorful and striking. But I was also struck by the prices, which are rather high! So I was pleased to receive one of these notebooks as part of a family Secret Santa holiday gift exchange. Now I get to review it for free!
The design of the Moglea notebook is really nice– the branding and product information is mostly on a removable card bound into the wire-o binding. The covers are a substantial paper board covered with cloth, onto which an abstract splash of paint has been applied. It’s not just a printed design, you can really feel the texture of the paint.
The paint continues to the back cover, where a removable sticker has some more product info and a bar code, and below it is the Moglea name stamped in metallic gold ink. The wire-o binding is a sort of bronze color, and green rivets hold a pink elastic closure in place. I always tend to gravitate towards plainer notebook covers in more neutral colors, but I do find this whole package pretty snazzy.
Inside, there are lavender endpapers, and a front cover page stamped in gold ink with a logo and space for some personal details. This page is made of a heavier paper than the rest of the pages. A blank page of similar weight ends the notebook. Just before that final page is an unusual feature: three clear plastic top-opening envelopes. These would be a very handy spot to store clippings or receipts or other odds and ends. The clear plastic sleeves are a nice alternative to the more typical expanding paper pocket on an inside back cover.
The paper inside the Moglea notebook is a plain creamy white, with a header line where you can note the date. The paper feels very smooth and pleasant to write on with a fine gel ink pen. It doesn’t feel super-thin, but no paper weight is specified. I had high hopes for how it would work with fountain pens, but I was sorely disappointed. Show-through is about average, but there was lots of bleed-through and feathering. Even a bolder gel-ink pen bled through a little bit.
As I noted, Moglea notebooks are not cheap. They are made in the USA and the hand work on the covers justifies a higher price to some extent, but this B5 size notebook was priced at $52.50! A similar A6 sized Moglea notebook is $30. (Other sizes and designs are available on their website.) I have seen similar prices for some Japanese notebooks that did not involve any hand-painting, and even a Moleskine hardcover in size XL is now $33, but I can’t help finding $52.50 a bit hard to swallow. (See some of my other posts about notebook prices and the effect of tariffs.) This notebook was a lovely thing to receive as a gift, but I would not be willing to spend my own money on another one, especially with paper that isn’t fountain-pen friendly.
Hi, Vic here – from Portugal. I absolutely agree with you in that such a product, such as it “is”, ends up too expensive, the beautiful covers and the usefulness of the object apart. But if we reffer to the paper alone, the final notebook and each new owner would both deserve something in the lines of Clarefontaine or Fabriano or even Oxford paper, and then the proud owner could write with one of their precious FOUNTAIN pens and not sighing so much about the price. But as it is, is a beautiful but almost useless and therefor too expensive object. Nonetheless it is a beautiful offering present and i congratulate you. Cheers!