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.
I recently read the book Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman. It’s not exactly a biography of Satie, a composer who is best known for some lovely pieces he called Gymnopédies. It’s more of an offbeat appreciation of Satie and music in general–a quirky book with a non-traditional structure, parts of which are almost like a dictionary or index of alphabetical references. Here’s a couple of pages from the section covering the word “note”:
I was was of course excited to hear that Satie was a habitual note-taker, and wanted to know more about the “miniscule music -paper notebooks he always carried in his pocket.”
Unfortunately, it’s hard to find much information! There is an archive of Satie’s papers at Harvard which is described as mostly consisting of “autograph notes, drafts, and fragments of musical compositions such as piano works, ballets, incidental music, entr’actes, songs, and a mass. They are notated in 29 small composition books as well as on loose sheets.” But while the archive is catalogued in detail online, there are no photos.
I couldn’t find any other images of Satie’s notebooks, but he’s known to have done a few sketches on letters, and perhaps also in notebooks. (You can see one of them at this link, and some of his beautiful handwriting here.) I’ve even been to the Erik Satie Museum in Honfleur (which is odd and delightful) but if I saw any of his notebooks there, I don’t remember and didn’t take a photo.
The mention of the small notebooks with music-paper of course made me think of Moleskine’s music notebooks. I also thought I remembered having an older Moleskine whose paper band mentioned Satie as one of the supposed historic users, amongst the other usual call-outs of Hemingway, Chatwin, VanGogh, Picasso and/or Matisse. I searched through my stash of spares but couldn’t find anything mentioning Satie, so I’m not sure if it’s a figment of my imagination. If anyone else remembers seeing Satie’s name on a Moleskine, please let me know!
I’ve had my eye on MeePlus for a while, after seeing lots of positive mentions of them on Instagram and Reddit. So when they contacted me to offer a sample of one of their MeePlus SlimPad notebooks for review, I jumped at the chance!
MeePlus is a Hong Kong-based small business run by husband and wife Lora and Toby. MeePlus has only been around since 2023 but it seems like they’ve accomplished a lot in a few short years, offering a growing line of leather ring binder notebooks and accessories. So let’s take a look at what they sent me. There’s a lot to talk about!
First impressions: The MeePlus notebook arrived nicely packaged in a gifty box, with the notebook in a cloth bag. It came with padding inside to protect the rings. The Krause rings are good quality– well-aligned and nice and snappy.
MeePlus notebook shown with my own inserts, which are a mix of Plotter, Filofax, Suatelier Design stickers, and home-made index tabs.
MeePlus offers a variety of leather types and colors, as well as various sizes. I chose a pocket size Pueblo leather notebook in olive green. The green color is beautiful and it’s the perfect size! (3.86 x 5.59″, or 98x142mm) MeePlus is willing to make custom sized notebooks and I was almost going to ask them to make a special size for me. But when I realized that their standard pocket size notebook was already a bit narrower than a Plotter mini 6 notebook, I decided to give it a try, and I’m glad I did!
The pueblo leather is almost the same as Plotter’s, but it’s a little thinner and more flexible, which I like. It lies flat with no breaking in. The edges are less polished than Plotter’s, but they still look clean and tidy. The corners on the MeePlus notebook are rounded to a tighter diameter than Plotter’s. The interior texture is also a little different, but it has a similarly pleasant leather smell. There are no brand markings inside or out, so you can flip it front to back if one side pleases you more– it has the normal variations you’d expect in leather, with the same sort of scuffy texture as Plotter’s pueblo. It can scratch easily but if you rub it with your fingers, the scratches will fade and blend in to the overall patina. Over the couple of months I’ve been using it, it’s darkening, becoming a bit more shiny, and showing marks where it’s molding to the rings below. Many people use ring protectors to minimize this wear, but I don’t mind it.
The ring protector shows the texture of the Pueblo leather when new, vs. the notebook which has been in use for about 2 months.MeePlus vs. Plotter
Plotter was the first brand I saw using this type of metal spine– MeePlus has the exact same design, but without any branding engraved on it. The metal spine is a striking detail and it allows the spine to be more rounded, not squared off in a way that makes it much thicker than the rings themselves. The metal bar is nicer looking than round rivets, which would be the only other way to attach rings to a single layer of leather, at least that I know of. But I have never seen 11mm rings that attach by rivets anyway– usually rings this small have a thin, curved backplate that is designed to be sandwiched between two layers of a cover, and clips onto the ring base at the top and bottom. In any case, I can’t help wishing the exterior was all leather– if you use your notebook on a wooden surface, you may need to be careful about scratching the wood, even though MeePlus does slightly round off the edges of the metal so they aren’t too sharp. But I do like how this attachment method allows the spine to be more rounded, not squared off in a way that makes it much thicker than the rings themselves.
Despite a bit of extra width added by the metal spine, the MeePlus SlimPad feels nicely slim and flexible overall. It just feels good in the hand and would be more pocketable than most ring binders. It’s not quite as narrow as the Filofax Guildford Extra Slim, but it’s one of the closest I’ve seen, and the slight extra width gives it a little more versatility in allowing the use of index tabs: standard Filofax tabs stick out of the Guildford. The MeePlus notebook is just a bit narrower and taller than the Filofax Lockwood Pocket Slim, which to me, gives it better proportions. And despite having the same size rings, the minimal construction of the MeePlus makes it less bulky than the Lockwood.
Note index tab sticking out from Filofax Guildford Extra Slim at top left.
Most of the other looseleaf notebooks I’ve used are Filofax organizers with various configurations of pockets. The minimal design of the MeePlus SlimPad notebook might sometimes make me miss having pockets but unless I’m using the notebook as a wallet, I don’t find myself using the pockets that much anyway. MeePlus and other companies make a variety of accessories you can use to add pockets, so it’s easy to adapt to your own personal preferences. I added some old Filofax accessories to mine– a plastic card holder and sleeve. (Not the current version of the plastic sleeve, which is wider– it just barely fits the Lockwood, and sticks out slightly from the MeePlus.)
MeePlus sent me some of the accessories they sell separately. I like the idea of adding a pocket but this card holder seems a little small to me, and I’d have preferred it without the pen loop. The other pen holder has a wide leather sleeve that will accommodate bigger pens. I never use pen holders but in this case, I prefer the leather sleeve as it doesn’t interfere with the inserts and closure of the notebook. It’s nice that the accessories are offered in matching leather.
MeePlus also included an assortment of their own refills. I was amazed at how many layouts they sent me, and there are even more on their website. Most are undated, but they have a few 2026 options that have just become available.
There’s a weekly layout that would function very much like what I enjoy using in my Nolty planner– a week on a page with a free-form facing page, in this case with squares.
The foldout habit tracker is nice– plenty of space to track up to 22 habits in one layout.
I don’t recall seeing a horizontal monthly layout like this before– the days of the month fitting on one side, with an open grid layout facing.
If you need a little more space you can use a foldout monthly plan, which has a grid on the back.
And there’s also a combo monthly foldout that has a few habit tracker lines on the bottom, with a grid on the back.
I won’t describe all the others– they almost deserve their own post! Most of the refills I received are a heavy, creamy, 120gsm paper, except for some basic dot grid sheets that use their “lightweight” paper, which is said to be made using a similar process to Tomoe River paper. Both perform extremely well with fountain pens– the lightweight paper has show-through, but nothing bleeds.
It’s impressive to see what a wide range of formatted and basic refills MeePlus has available— I don’t know if any other planner brand offers so many pocket size refill options, other than Filofax at their heyday in the 80s/90s! I actually counted, and Filofax currently offers 46 pocket size refills (not counting out of date calendars). Meeplus offers 8 lightweight, 28 basic, 28 colorful, 6 daily, 18 monthly, 12 weekly, and 8 yearly. Not counting a few that were crossed out, so presumably out of stock or discontinued. The prices seem very reasonable, but you have to pay attention to the sheet count– for instance, the week-on-two-pages layout is $7.00, but the pack size is only 40 sheets, so you’ll need two packs to cover a whole year. That is still cheaper than Plotter’s dated version at $15.00.
Plotter’s Pueblo binder in the comparable size is $145. The MeePlus SlimPad I received is $109. That’s not “cheap,” but I think it’s a great value given the comparable quality. They are also offering free shipping on orders over $50, and they are including all tariffs and duties in the price. For those of us in the US, that makes it an even better value vs. ordering directly from PlotterUSA, as Plotter’s free (domestic) shipping doesn’t kick in until your order is over $185. MeePlus also ship directly to Europe, where it can be a hassle to order Plotter.
The MeePlus Slimpad is a fantastic notebook that feels simple but luxurious. The slim, minimal shape will please anyone who’s been looking for alternatives to Plotter or Filofax’s Pocket Slim size notebooks. I’ve been happily using mine for a couple of months now and plan to continue. I can’t help wanting to try another one in a different color or size too, despite my large collection of other small looseleaf notebooks! But for something I enjoy using as much as the MeePlus SlimPad, I always want a spare.
I received free products from the manufacturer for this review, but all opinions are my own and I have not been compensated in any other way.
Sometimes it seems like there are so many systems and methods for using notebooks– Bullet Journaling is the most famous, I suppose. And then there is GTD, though that doesn’t have to be notebook-based. I also saw a link recently to the “Life at a Glance System” of journaling (via The Pen Addict).
Some of these systems are all about productivity, but I can’t help wondering how productive it is to have to figure out all these rules and symbols and pages recapping weeks and months and years. I think we’re all attracted to the idea of a system that will somehow optimize our performance, but to me it seems like if we’re always searching for systems, we might be losing our focus on the end goals. Do note-taking methods and journaling systems just over-complicate things?
Then there’s the aesthetic considerations: Bullet Journaling has a sub-set of users for whom it seems to be all about the set-up and decoration of the pages (and displaying them on Instagram). And it’s not just Bullet Journalers– many other notebookers use a variety of inks and pens, stickers, calligraphy, drawings and doodles, vintage stamps and ephemera to give each page a colorful, highly-designed look. Using a shitajiki, aka pencil board or writing board, is also popular– this is a guide with lines that can be laid under a blank page to make it easier to keep your handwriting aligned.
I do get the attraction. I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to “Beautiful Notebook Pages,” and many of the images there are of colorful, decorated, precisely organized pages that have taken some effort. But my attention is also grabbed by notebook pages that look interesting by accident, because they are densely scribbled or beat up or just somehow infused with personality and purpose.
As for my own notebooks, I use some colored inks, and I sometimes paste in images or play with attempts at calligraphy, but most of my pages don’t look beautiful at all. My handwriting can be tidy and attractive when I want it to be, but often it’s just an uneven scrawl. Even in sketchbooks where I do drawings I’m proud of, I often think the pages don’t look as well-composed as they do in other artists’ sketchbooks I see.
Random non-beautiful, non-systemized notebook pages from my own journals.
Rule 1: Write stuff down in notebooks whenever you feel like it
Rule 2: DGAF about how it looks
Rule 3: two rules are enough
I guarantee this method will make you more productive than spending all those extra hours coloring little pumpkins on your October spread with 3 shades of orange markers.
Most of my collection of vintage looseleaf notebooks is either basic black ring binders from the first half of the 20th century from makers like Marquette and Wilson Jones, or Filofax organizers from the 1980s and 1990s. I don’t have that many other brands, so I was happy to add this Succes organizer to my collection.
That isn’t a typo– the brand is Succes, with one S. (Well, two Ss but only one at the end!) Succes is a Dutch company that has existed since 1928, first as the publisher of a business magazine, then branching out into producing leather agenda covers in 1932. They are still in business today, selling their own and other brands of organizers.
My Succes organizer dates to 1981, based on its calendar insert. It does not appear to have ever been used. The leather is a lovely cordovan or oxblood color, with a smooth, slightly shiny texture. It looks like the texture imitated by the faux-leather covers of Moleskine notebooks, except that it also has some slight lines or creases along it. The cover has metal corner protectors, in a silver metallic color to match the rings. I’m not usually a fan of these corners, mainly because they usually seem to be in a gold or brass color, but they do give the Succes notebook a somewhat more formal look, and should keep the corners from getting bent and scuffed. There is a small Succes logo on the back cover. The size and no-fastener design are very similar to many of the pocket slim Filofaxes I’ve reviewed.
Inside, there’s a nice arrangement of pockets that make this a good wallet– on the left a secretarial pocket with another pocket on top, and on the right a full-length pocket and slots for 4 cards. The pockets have a contrasting liner in fabric and leather, while the spine behind the rings is backed with leather.
The rings are about 1cm in diameter from side to side– they have a slight oval shape which allows for less wasted space than a perfectly circular ring. They have a nice snappy mechanism and close without any gaps.
The Succes organizer came with what must be only part of its original inserts, which show the brand name Seven Star Diary. This was apparently the sub-brand Succes used for marketing a Filofax-type organizer system. The front page has space for contact details, and also serves as the index tab for the “diary” section. The other tabs are labeled “months,” “cash,” “alphabet,” and “notes.” It’s interesting that they have an “alphabet” tab– unlike Filofax, where they label it “addresses,” this tab acknowledges that you might file other information alphabetically too.
Each tab serves a double purpose, with yearly calendars, lists of holidays, weights and measures, first aid tips, and space to fill in with “personal memoranda” facts like clothing size, insurance info, and what model typewriter and binoculars you own! The narrow area designated for “train or bus service” with “to/from” columns puzzles me– I’m not sure how you’d fit much useful information there. But I love this concept overall– why should divider tabs be blank when you could pack them with useful information you might want to refer to?
The calendar only has pages for a couple of months, so I’m guessing that the original system here was designed to have you only carry the daily pages for a couple of months at a time, and then note longer-term items in monthly pages. There are month-on-two-page spreads for all of 1981 and through March 1982. I love the use of the square grid across the daily and monthly calendar pages– nice and flexible while also helping you keep things neatly aligned.
The daily pages have a column with the half hours from 8am to 10pm, and then grid space at the side. It might not work for people with larger handwriting, but to me, this is a very functional and attractive layout. I also love the retro digital-clock look to the date numbers, and the little quotes and aphorisms at the bottom of each page. At the end of each month, there is a notes page before the next month’s days begin– or at least there is one between March and April, which are the only months I have!
This little organizer is quite lovely on its own, but it also came with a bonus: a matching jotter. It’s just slightly smaller than the organizer, and is a simple folder with a secretarial pocket on the left, and a full length pocket on the right, on top of which are strips of leather that will hold a few sheets of paper– four sheets with a square grid were included. This would be a handy item to keep in one’s pocket for quick notes which can later be filed in the organizer.
I had never even heard of Succes or the Seven Star Diary brand until I bought this, but I’m sure some readers will remember them. There are various mentions of this system online, often in the context of people talking about organizational systems like Franklin Planners, Dayrunners, Filofax and GTD. The brand seems to have been distributed primarily in Europe, Japan, Israel, and British Commonwealth, but I don’t know if it ever appeared in the US market. If I’d come across this Succes Seven Star Diary in 1981 when I was a kid, I would have been over the moon about it! And many of its design elements are still appealing and inspiring today.
What are the rules around selling and collecting old notebooks that belonged to other people? I’ve recently been wondering about this after seeing certain items for sale on various sites, including a diary with very intimate thoughts and full names included. Nothing was blurred out in the listing, so I was able to google the people and it seemed like they are still alive. One even seems to be kind of a public figure, though not a celebrity or household name.
I don’t think what I found was just coincidental: the names are unusual enough, and the time span matches ages closely enough that there don’t seem to be a lot of other possibilities. Do these people know or care that their personal lives from 40 years ago are out on the internet for public consumption? There were several listings for journals and diaries, with several pages shared for each. Even if the person who wrote the diaries doesn’t care that other people are reading them, what about the other person who is the subject of some entries? They might not have known they were being written about in the first place.
I can’t help feeling like some line has been crossed by that seller. If I had ever lost or thrown out some of my old diaries and they somehow ended up with a reseller, I would hope that person might try to contact me and let me at least try to buy them back. I don’t have a particularly unique name, so it might not work, but I’d be mortified if my private musings were posted publicly without my consent. Maybe the seller did manage to contact the original owner of the diaries I saw for sale and that person didn’t care? But unless permission was given for full exposure by all parties mentioned, I think the names should have been redacted from the listing. Whoever bought the diaries would still see the names, but at least they wouldn’t be out there on the internet for everyone to see.
In my own collection, I have a number of “other people’s notebooks” that still have names in them. I think they’re all old enough that those people are dead, but I have still taken care not to include identifying information in my posts other than the occasional name or innocuous details about people who don’t seem to have any current digital footprint. None of my “other people’s notebooks” have contained any embarrassing details, but I also have one notebook that I bought on eBay that was said to be a sort of diary and sketchbook– it turned out to be mostly diary, seemingly written by someone with serious mental illness. I’ve never even posted about it because it just seemed disturbing and somehow wrong to use it as blog content.
I guess if someone is already a public figure, there may be different ideas about what’s considered fair game– some of Joan Didion’s old diary entries have just been published in a book, and there is some controversy about whether this should have been done without her explicit consent. But some of her published writing was already highly personal, and she must have known that any writing she produced and saved would have been fodder for publication and study after her death unless she gave explicit instructions otherwise.
I guess “consent” and “instructions” are the key words here… maybe in addition to the space for contact details and the “reward if found,” notebooks should should come with checkboxes for “ok to read/sell/publish after my death” and “destroy after my death!”
Just a fraction of the many notebooks I don’t want exposed on the internet after my death!
It’s been ages since I updated my “using now” photo, and while some things have stayed the same, there have been some changes along the way.
I’m still using my Nolty Gold diary/planner to log exercise, meals, to-do lists, and grocery lists, as well as noting appointments and keeping track of habits. More details here: How I Use My Nolty Gold Planner
I still have a Moleskine sketchbook going at all times. I go through phases when I draw a lot, and then phases when I don’t. I’m in a mostly not-drawing phase right now, so my current sketchbook has been in use since March.
My journal tends to alternate between squared Moleskine and plain or dotted Bindewerk Linen Travel Journal. At the moment, I’m actually using a plain Moleskine. I do find myself missing the squares! I’m not good about keeping my handwriting aligned on the page, so squares or dots are helpful. I’ve also thought about using some sort of guide sheet under the page but I don’t have anything and am not sure I care enough to bother.
Moleskine sketchbook and journalPrettier-than-average page in my Moleskine journal
For the last couple of years, I’ve also had a fourth notebook in the mix. In my 2024 post Every Day Carry Notebooks, I talked about how I’d added the Filofax Guildford Extra Slim, despite finding it somewhat redundant. Since then, I’ve swapped in various other refillable notebooks from my collection, including some that were featured in my History of the Pocket Slim Filofax series of posts. It’s easy to just swap the contents from one notebook to another, so I’ve tried at least 5 or 6 in the past year, some for very short periods of time. The one that stuck the longest other than the Guildford was the Filofax Grosvenor whose modification to larger rings I documented in this post: Vintage Filofax Modification. I really loved using it, despite feeling like I should find a better way to attach the rings! But I recently made yet another swap to a MeePlus notebook that I received as a sample for review. I’ll be doing a full review soon, but spoiler alert: I really like it!
I use this refillable looseleaf notebook for longer term lists and notes that I know I’ll want to refer to beyond the timeframe of my journal (about 3 months) or my yearly diary/planner.
MeePlus notebook
So that’s a quick look at my most frequently used notebooks. I’m also still using and loving my personal size Filofax Gloucester that I use for my job. Details here: My New Work Notebook: A Surprise Filofax. I am also using a Field Notes notebook for my French class, a Moleskine watercolor book for the occasional dabbles with paint, a Nebula Casual Note as a desktop scratch pad, and a Nolty #1221 for my weekly image diary. I also continue to use a Louise Carmen notebook— sans actual notebook– as a wallet.
So that’s the update! I often feel like I should be trying to use some of the other brands from my collection, but I’m a creature of habit, and I’ve found a routine that works for me.
Today we’ll take a look at another item from my collection of vintage notebooks, a Master-Craft loose leaf binder. At first glance, it looks quite similar to some of the other pocket size loose leaf notebooks I own but there are a couple of interesting differences.
This Master-Craft notebook was quite well-used. The exterior is scuffed in various places, and you can see impressions of the rings where the leather finish started to wear thin. There’s even some kind of crusty substance stuck on the back cover. But I’m sure this notebook was quite handsome when it was new. The cover seems to be made of leather, with a pebbly grain on the outside and an inner texture that resembles the tiny dimples on Moleskine’s faux-leather covers. The front cover has a debossed border around 3 sides, while the back cover has a stitched border. The original owner’s name is stamped on the front cover. The notebook measures about 3-1/2″ x 5-7/16″ x 9/16″ thick.
Master-Craft notebook vs. pocket Moleskine
The spine of the Master-Craft notebook is one of the unusual details. There seems to be a separate strip of leather that runs down the spine, wrapping over the top and bottom edges. My guess is that it was made this way to hide whatever fastening mechanism secures the rings onto the cover. But it also looks nice, and seems to reinforce the ends.
Inside the front cover there is a gold-stamped brand logo reading “Made in the shops of Master-Craft” and the model number 5010 1/4.
Inside the back cover is a nice curved-edge pocket, the attachment of which is the reason for the stitching on the outside.
The rings are rather dulled with age, with some spots of rust, but they still open and close with a satisfying snap. I love that the rings are oval, not circular. The “1/4” in the model number may refer to the ring diameter being about 1/4 inch if measured from the metal plate that covers the ring mechanism. The diameter side to side is more like 3/8 inch.
This notebook came with lovely black end sheets with a striated texture. Many of the lined sheets are blank, but the ones with writing seem to have phone numbers, a list of some religious books, and notes about different models of water heaters.
The coolest thing about this notebook is that it includes a 1937-1938 calendar page that was probably included when it was originally purchased. The calendar page also mentions the Master-Craft brand, and reminds the owner how to open the rings correctly. I love knowing that this notebook is at least 88 years old!
I found some information about Master-Craft here, as part of a history of an industrial building in Kalamazoo, MI. Master-Craft came into existence in 1929, as a descendant of the Remington-Rand Company, which in 1927 had merged with the Loose Leaf Binder and Equipment Co. That company had previously been called The Kalamazoo Loose Leaf Binder Company, and was said to be the largest loose leaf binder manufacturer in the world. I had found another eBay listing for a notebook where the brand logo said “Made in the shops of Master-Craft, Kalamazoo, U.S.A.” but since Master-Craft moved out of Kalamazoo in 1935, my notebook doesn’t mention that location. Yet another eBay listing shows the company name as “The Shaw-Walker Company, Master-Craft Division, Kalamazoo, Mich.”
I don’t know where they moved to when they left Kalamazoo, but I found a business listing for MasterCraft of Seattle which notes that they make loose leaf binders and other office supplies. I can’t tell if they are still active, as their last Facebook post was dated 2015, and as of this writing their website doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t think there is any connection to the MasterCraft Boat Company or the MasterCraft home building company.
I would love to know more about the history of Master-Craft. It sounds like it was a big employer in Kalamazoo for quite a while, as my online searches also turned up various obituaries of people who had worked there. I wasn’t able to find out much else about C. A. Seiple either, other than that someone of that name died in the 1950s. So this is yet another old-fashioned black loose leaf notebook with tantalizing links to the past, but whose full history will remain an enigma.
In Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, there’s a mention of how Socrates disapproved of writing things down because he thought it would ruin people’s ability to memorize things. At least I think there something about it in that book… but I can’t find either “Socrates” or “memory” in the index, so maybe I’ve forgotten the true source of that information. This in itself is perhaps an illustration of the point of this post. I didn’t write down a note about the Socrates story, and since I didn’t, I can’t remember where I found it.
I at least didn’t make it up, according to this site. I might also have read about it in Moonwalking With Einstein:The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, a fascinating book about memory and the people who train themselves to accomplish extreme feats like recalling thousands of digits of pi, or the exact sequence of a deck of cards after flipping through it quickly once.
A friend of mine is always saying I’m a freak because I remember so many things– I can tell all sorts of stories about random things that have happened to me from the age of 3 on, can remember where certain college classmates I was never even friendly with went to high school, and can name actors whose movies I’ve never seen when someone else can’t come up with the name. I seem to be particularly good at a certain kind of visual recall, especially for faces– I’ve been known to recognize someone I met once, a decade earlier.
But this same friend who marvels at my memory is amazed that I can’t keep a grocery list in my head or remember to go to appointments if I don’t have them written down in my planner and in my electronic calendar, with an alarm. Though she can’t remember names or faces or childhood stories the way I can, she has no trouble keeping track of her shopping and to-do lists mentally. She’s the person who used to use a Filofax (featured in this post: Filofax Winchester from the Late 1980s) but now doesn’t really use a notebook or paper planner at all. She puts some appointments in her phone calendar, but might not bother if it’s a dinner with a friend a couple of days later. If I don’t write those dinners down, I’ll forget and plan something else!
So obviously different people have different kinds of memory skills. But might our habits of writing things down also have an impact? When I go back through my old notebooks, I sometimes find descriptions of things I don’t remember, or at least hadn’t thought about in years. Did the act of writing them down somehow tell my brain “don’t worry, this is backed up elsewhere, you can delete.” And on the flip side, all those childhood stories, casts of movies, and people I only met once are generally things I have never written about in a notebook.
Age is definitely a factor– there are things I know I used to remember and now don’t, like names of certain teachers and classmates. When I was younger, it never really occurred to me to keep a record of such things in case I forgot them later. Most of us who keep diaries and journals probably aren’t usually doing it for the purposes of reinforcing our memory– often it’s more about just processing feelings and understanding them better by articulating them in writing. I’m reminded of the Field Notes slogan “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”
Or it’s just a ritual– the lady who kept a diary for 90 years probably didn’t do it just so she’d remember exactly what happened every day of her life. Though that kind of record-keeping can be handy sometimes– I’ve referred back to my own diaries to answer random questions like “when did I last eat red meat,” which I’d never be able to do with my brain alone. In recent years I’ve become more conscious of trying to add notes about current events and politics to my journaling. The world seems like it is changing very fast, and maybe someday I’ll want to remember how I felt about it at the time, without my memories being colored by hindsight.
Nolty diary where I write my grocery lists, to-do lists, appointments, what I ate, etc.
Back to The Notebook, the final chapter is about the idea of the “extended mind,” where certain kinds of thought are only made possible by external tools beyond the brain itself. Allen describes the example of a man named Otto who has Alzheimer’s disease. He writes all new information he learns in a notebook, and refers to that notebook when he needs old information:
So long as one trusts the information stored in the notebook, relies upon it, and uses it, there is — philosophically speaking– no meaningful difference between the notebook and the mind. Therefore Otto’s mind has expanded to include his notebook, and your notebook– if you use it as Otto does– may become a part of yours.
I’d love to know how others feel about this. Has using a planner made you less able to remember what you need to do just using your brain? Do you keep a journal or log of your life to be able to remember the past? Do you consider your notebooks a part of your mind?
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It’s really quite dangerous for me to shop for pen refills at Jet Pens– I think I’ll be disciplined and just get what I need, but then I can never seem to resist throwing in a notebook…
…such as this little cutie made by Papier Platz.
Though the name sounds French or German, this is made in Japan by a small company that “collaborates with artists and illustrators to produce charming washi tapes and stickers.” This notebook is a collaboration with the Japanese artist Eric Small Things aka Erico Matsubara.
The Papier Platz notebook is smaller than my usual go-to size, measuring 5-1/8′ x 3-3/8″ x 5/16″ thick. This makes it very pocketable. The outside is a removable plastic cover with clear pockets inside to hold the covers of the page block. There is no branding anywhere except on the back cover.
The page block inside is very basic on its own– it’s not meant to be used without a cover but it’s really nicely made with nice grey cardboard end sheets, so it actually looks quite presentable!
Inside, there are pale grey endsheets, and a ribbon marker in a beautiful shade of blue. It doesn’t look as nice in these photos, but I love this blue ribbon so much I want to buy a big spool of it and change out all the ribbon markers on my other notebooks now!
The construction of the Papier Platz notebook is very refined– I love when there are a larger number of signatures with fewer pages, as you see here– it always seems to make the spine more flexible and the notebook opens more flat.
The paper has a 4mm grid made of dotted lines. No paper weight is specified. It’s super smooth and silky, so it feels great with any pen or pencil. But it’s very thin, so a couple of my wettest pens bled through a bit, and show-through was a little worse than average. The Jet Pens listing calls this fountain pen friendly, and I would agree, as the inks look very vibrant and there’s no feathering, but you’d want to avoid the wettest nibs and anything where you’re applying a little pressure to flex a nib.
Jet Pens also has this in a few other colors/designs. Their price is $10.25, which seems a wee bit high given that the sticker on the packaging says the price in Japan is 990 yen, which is about $6.83 right now. But given tariffs and other costs of importation, this may be a normal level of markup these days.
This is a simple but charming notebook–I love the precise craftsmanship and high quality and cute design touches. If you want a small, stylish and fountain pen friendly memo book or pocket journal, I think the Papier Platz notebook is a great choice.
I purchased this notebook with my own funds and have not been compensated for this post.
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…
