Wooden Notebooks

A cover that outlasts what is written in it

The covers are birch plywood, laser-engraved and cut, with an A5 paper block held between them on rings. That is the whole idea: the pages are consumable and the cover is not.

A notebook with a card cover is finished when the last page is. These are built so the block can be lifted out and replaced and the cover kept, which changes what the object is: closer to a binder that happens to be beautiful than to a stationery item.

How is the paper held?

Three ways, and the product page says which. Our own design is a single sheet of birch scored along the spine so that it bends like a hinge, with a four-ring mechanism inside and a black card leaf front and back; closed, it reads as one solid block of wood. The second is two boards on exposed rings, two or four, the plainest and the one that opens flattest. The third is a leather spine riveted along the edge, with a strap and stud across the front, rings inside: the most finished of the three, and the one that reads as a journal rather than a working notebook.

On all three the rings open, the block lifts out, and a new one goes in.

What goes in them?

Something meant to be kept rather than used up. The covers are made for a journey: a wooden cover survives a rucksack in a way that card does not, and several of the designs are about travel. The same format becomes a recipe book, a wedding guest book, a garden diary or the record of a single year.

What is engraved on the cover?

One design per notebook, cut into the wood rather than printed on it, so a bag will not rub it away: a compass rose with mountains, a plane and a sailing boat; a dragon; a unicorn among blossom; an owl; a Celtic triskelion; a crescent moon hung with charms; a tree of life; a vineyard; a dream catcher; a world map.

Because the cover is what survives, the design matters more here than on a card notebook. It is the thing the object will be recognised by ten years from now.

What is the paper like?

Lined, with a date line and the days of the week printed at the top of every page, so a page can be a diary entry or a list as you please. A hundred A5 sheets to a block, 90 g/m² on our own designs and 80 g/m² on the others; it takes pencil, ballpoint and fineliner.

What to know before buying

A wooden cover is stiffer and heavier than card. It will not roll into a coat pocket and it does not bend, which is what protects the pages and also what makes it a deliberate object to carry rather than a casual one.

It also marks. Wood scratches where card creases, and both are what a used notebook is supposed to look like.