This one’s for Star Wars fans: sketchbooks from the 1970s belonging to the costumer designer for the original movie.
A treasure trove of items owned by Star Wars costume designer John Mollo are being sold at London auctioneers Bonhams including notes and his sketchbook.
If you don’t have the estimated £300,000 it will take to buy this, there’s always the Star Wars Moleskines...
As regular readers know, I am a big fan of the Nolty Diary. Also known as the “Efficiency Notebook,” this Japanese planner has deservedly become a cult favorite, with Instagram posts galore showing off how people use their Nolty diaries. After very happily using a Nolty diary all through 2018, I decided to spring for an upgrade for 2019: the leather covered Nolty Gold. I also bought a couple other 2019 diaries that I’ll show you below.
The Nolty Gold is a bit of a splurge, at about $56, but it feels special from the minute you see the box. The packaging is very elegant, with the notebook tucked in neatly under tissue paper. Underneath the notebook are various bits of Nolty literature, which I am unable to translate as I don’t speak Japanese. There are also 2 supplemental notebooks in the box– more on those a bit later.
The diary itself gives an impression of luxury– you can smell the real leather, and immediately see the difference in texture from the regular vinyl-covered Nolty. But I did get a surprise when I first touched it– I expected it to feel very smooth and supple, and it sort of is– but the leather felt like it had little stubbly hairs sticking out of it! It felt a little rough and catchy against my skin, the way it feels if you handle silk fabric when your hands are dry and chapped. I thought maybe my hands WERE dry and chapped and that that was what I was feeling, but I could actually see the tiny bristles (or whatever they are) on the notebook. Luckily, these started to wear away as I handled the notebook and are now almost gone, leaving the leather feeling much smoother. It is soft but the texture seems more forgiving of scratches than some leathers. The year is gold stamped on the front and blind stamped on the spine, and there is a decorative line pressed along the edges. The folded-over leather gives a nice weight to the corners when you compare them to the vinyl Nolty.
The overall size is just slightly smaller than the vinyl Nolty, due to less cover overhang, though it is still a bit more than I’d like. I’m hoping that with use the corners and edges will curl inwards a little, which hasn’t really happened with my vinyl 2018 diary. I was also surprised to see that the overhang was not symmetrical all around on the Nolty Gold I bought. Every other Nolty diary I’ve seen is so impeccably crafted with perfectionist attention to detail, and this notebook has no other flaw that I could detect. That said, the variance I noticed is not extreme and probably wouldn’t bother most people.
The overhang is slightly bigger on the back cover and the bottom edge. At least on the back cover, I thought this might be to allow room for the supplemental booklets that can be tucked in the back. Every Nolty comes with a removable address book that slips under a strap and behind the back pocket. In addition, the Gold model comes with two booklets containing just lined paper for additional notes. They are made slightly narrower than the address book so they fit perfectly without distorting the notebook cover, and their gilded edges match the main diary. I wish Nolty put a strap and pocket inside the front cover so you could add the 2nd supplemental notebook there. I’m not sure yet what I’ll use mine for, but I like the way they fatten the notebook up a little, and they should be handy for lists and other notes.
Inside the Nolty Gold, the only real difference is that the endpapers have a sort of mottled tone to them. It goes nicely with the gilded page edges. Otherwise, the page layouts are the same, and you still get the 2 ribbon markers. The back pocket and strap are made of black leather to match the exterior, vs the clear plastic on the basic Nolty.
You can see my 2018 Nolty review for other details on the paper performance, etc. I really love my 2018 Nolty, and I love the leather 2019 Nolty Gold even more. I bought mine on Rakuten and paid ¥6160 ($56.41) including shipping from Japan, so this diary is quite an investment, but I think it will be hard to go back to the regular version!
I also bought two other 2019 Nolty diaries. Model 1218 is a red version of the standard Efficiency Notebook. The cover and page edges are a nice bright red, but otherwise it is exactly the same as model 1211. The red is fun, but I prefer black so I’m giving this to someone as a gift. (I paid $16.99 for it at Kinokuniya’s website, with free shipping since I had it sent to their NYC store for pickup.)
Model 1121 is the smaller version of the Efficiency Notebook, with extra train maps. Did I have any need for Japanese train maps that I can’t make head nor tail of? No, but they sure are fun to look at anyway! And I LOVE this little diary! The size is adorable. It fits nicely into a passport size Midori Travelers Notebook. The cover is a different texture from my 2018 model 1211. I like the 1121’s more pebbly texture.
The interior layouts have been shrunk down proportionally, even the lined pages which are spaced at 4mm instead of 5mm. If you don’t have small handwriting, this notebook may not be for you!
I’ve gotten so accustomed to using 3.5 x 5.5″ notebooks that I rarely even consider any other size for daily use, but for some reason, I just adore this little Nolty and will be using it for something– maybe some tiny daily doodling. (I paid $21.99 for this via Kinokuniya. Next time I won’t bother getting the extra train maps, as the version without them was only $17.99. I don’t know why it’s more expensive than the larger version.)
I haven’t done any pen tests on these but I am sure they have the same paper found in my 2018 diary– it is wonderfully smooth and fountain pen friendly. Everything about the Nolty diary is just so pleasing to all the senses– tactile, visual, and olfactory, anyway! I am really looking forward to another year of using a Nolty as my planner/diary/life log/to-do list keeper and can’t recommend this brand enough! These are hard to find in stores, so if you want to buy a Nolty diary and can’t make it to Japan, I suggest you try Rakuten or Kinokuniya.
Unfortunately this exhibition of artists’ sketchbooks is long over, but it ran earlier this year at the Western Wyoming Community College Art Gallery in Rock Springs. It looks like it was a lovely display!
The pages below are by Leah Hardy:
Below are sketches by Florence Alfano McEwin, who was also the curator of the exhibit:
“Drawn Thought,†the title of a teaching art exhibit now on display in Rock Springs, is something of a misnomer. Many — maybe half — of the sketchbooks exhibited contain little to no drawing. In others, drawing might be only one component of the sketchbook. These books present an intimate spill of whatever catches the artist’s mind at that moment: a scribble line drawing of a horse, a ticket to a museum, a phone number, the landscape observed and remembered.
Read more: Drawn Thought: Artist Sketchbooks | WyoFile
Zoot goes by bulletjournaljoy on Instagram, where she displays an impressive dedication to journaling! I like her colorful variety of notebooks, while maintaining a consistent format and tidy labeling.
You can also follow her journaling journey on her website: BulletJournalJoy
A beautiful and colorful page from a notebook by artist Phillip March Jones. I love the idea of taking old pages of scribbly notes and turning them into vibrant works of abstract art.
The artist, writer and curator Phillip March Jones almost always carries a notebook — a small Moleskine affair, just the right size to put in a jacket or pocket, suitable for jotting down important notes.Typically, he also travels with art supplies (he is an artist, after all), and so 15 years ago, he started to develop meandering compositions that build, with color and form, on the scribblings in each notebook, phone numbers, names and so forth.
Read more: Phillip March Jones: “Workbooks” | Visual Arts | gazettetimes.com
Here’s an interesting Asian notebook from a brand that I spotted via Instagram. I saw the Front brand name pop up once or twice and wondered if it was a trendy new brand, but I also thought the notebook just looked nice. From there, it took a bit of internet detective work to actually find a way to buy one, but I’m glad I succeeded, via AliExpress!
The full name of the company is Shenzhen City Front Industry Co. Ltd, and they are a China-based maker of various stationery products, mostly for business use, but with a few notebooks more directed at personal journaling. These notebooks seem to be intended only for the Asian market, as the packaging is almost entirely in Chinese (as far as I can tell). Despite the English brand name Front, the company’s website is also primarily in Chinese, but they do have some English information.
I don’t even remember exactly what caught my eye about this notebook, other than it being a brand name I’d never encountered. But I probably noticed the leather look to the cover, and the very minimal overhang. When I first received my notebook, I was certainly happy to see these features! The cover is supposed to be “bonded leather,” which contains some element of real leather– to me it just seems like fake leather, but not in a bad way. I did notice a strange smell when I first opened the package, but that was a few months ago and it went away quickly. The packaging was a simple shrinkwrap, with a small sheet of brand information tucked in. The Front brand name is very subtly stamped on the front cover, and the back cover is stamped with a model number.
I would call this a flexi-bound notebook– it’s a bit more substantial than a softcover, and it does have the slight cover overhang like a hardcover, but there are no stiff boards. The notebook bends easily enough to be comfortable to carry in a pocket.
The page edges are dyed brown, so the exterior seems very sleek and minimal, even though it is thicker than average for this size notebook. It is said to be A6 but it is 90 x 140cm. A pocket size Moleskine is shown below for comparison.
Inside, the endpapers match the dark brown color. The slim ribbon marker is also brown. There is no space for writing your name anywhere. There is no back pocket or elastic closure.
The pages inside (146 sheets/292 pages) are very straightforward– other than 15 sheets of plain paper at the back, which are perforated for removal, the entire notebook is lined pages with a subtle header where you can add the date. The header has tiny tick-boxes for the seven days of the week, each noted by a letter. As with the Stalogy notebook, these are in quite small print and might be hard for some people to read. Similar to the Nolty diaries, there are dots along the top and bottom of the page so you can draw vertical lines if you wish. The lines are spaced at 8mm and the dots are spaced at 1cm. The lines don’t extend to the end of the pages. At the base of each page (except for the removable ones) is a small Front logo. I usually don’t like lined notebooks, or having logos on the page, but in this instance it’s all subtle enough not to bother me. The notebook opens quite flat.
The writing experience is pretty great. The paper is creamy off-white and quite smooth. It will bleed and feather a bit with a heavy wet fountain pen if you are pressing down to flex the nib, though my Pilot Falcon actually didn’t bleed with flexing. A few other wet inks feathered slightly. But it is otherwise great on bleed-through and a little better than average on show-through. I would call this fountain pen friendly with the caveat that you can’t push it too far. With fine point gel ink pens, it’s a dream. (A few of my lesser-used fountain pens were dried up when I started my test page, so I re-inked for truer results.)
Despite the difficulty in finding a source for this notebook, it didn’t end up being terribly expensive– my total for this one item from AliExpress was $11.29, with free shipping. (Other colors and sizes are also available.) At some point, I will use this as a daily notebook, and if it holds up well, I’m sure I’ll buy a few more. There’s something about it that I just love– the monochromatic simplicity, the soft feel, the lack of overhang. Add in the paper performance, and it really makes it a great find. I can see why some owners of Front notebooks have found them worth Instagramming!
While browsing around on Leuchtturm’s website a while back, I came across these interesting items: stamp albums! At first, I didn’t know what they were, as the heading calls them “Travel Stockbooks.” I love the idea of a special notebook to safely hold stamps, in a format matching their other notebooks.
The details:
- 2 sizes, 24 pages: Large 9×12″ (A4) with 9 glassine strips per page or Small 6×9″ (A5) with 6 glassine strips per page
- Premium black leatherette cover with rounded corners
- Heavy chamois-colored card stock (550 g/m²)
- Rigid binding
- Double glassine interleaves for optimum protection
- Inside cover pocket for individual mint sheets, documents, etc.
- Elegant bookmark ribbon
- Elastic closure holds collectibles in place and limits exposure to dust
- Incl. stickers for labeling the front and spine
Amazon has a variety of other Leuchtturm stamp albums if you search under “stockbook”. I was surprised to see quite a few other products for collectors of coins, paper money, bottlecaps and more, sold either under the Leuchtturm name or under the English brand name Lighthouse:
I’m assuming this has always been a big segment of Leuchtturm’s business in Germany and just hasn’t been part of their notebook-focused US marketing.
I hate it when I see cute dated planners. There’s only so many planners one person can use each year, so it’s much harder to justify buying lots of them! I already have three Nolty diaries for 2019. But here’s another Japanese planner that looks intriguing:
Mark’s Souple EDiT Daily Planner 2019 – B7 – Olive Green
At 4.8 x 2.8″ and .7″ thick, it’s a cute little chunky size. It comes in a rainbow of nice colors. It has a dotted day-per-page layout along with additional monthly and yearly pages. It has two ribbon markers. It is fountain pen friendly. What’s not to love?
You can get one at JetPens.com… maybe I will too! I suppose if I don’t use it in 2019 I could always repurpose it for… 2030???
I’m always salivating over these big marker and colored pencil sets when the holidays roll around. Santa, are you listening?
And if markers and colored pencils aren’t your thing, here’s a few other items to keep your notebook pages colorful!
Oh, and did you need a new notebook to fill with all these lovely things? How about one of these:
Leda Art Supply sketchbooks (see my review)
Bindewerk Linen Cover Notebook (see my review)
TWSBI Notebook (see my review)
Superior Maker Notebook (see my review)
Sometimes the simplest little sketches just grab me. This one featured on the Urban Sketchers site is gorgeous.
by Javier de Blas in La Rioja, Spain] Logroño, 11.05.2018. I watch the evening with no thought in my mind. Green is still alive, but autumn is already in the sky.
Source: In a few strokes: autum in the sky | Urban Sketchers
