London Stationery Show report

Your dogged correspondent trekked down to the London Stationery Show for a second year, and as previously there was an embarrassment of riches.  Many of this year’s ‘finds’ are ones we’ll come back to, so here’s a quick report to whet your appetite.

There is no escape from Noris; resistance is futile

Highlights included:

  1. The Manuscript stand, with hands-on calligraphy area and of course the rather splendid new ML1856 – which we’re hoping to review before too long.

  2. Kaweco – having now seen the brass version of the Special it’s obvious why it immediately sold out, but we’ll be back to review it when we can get our hands on a few.

  3. Meeting Stuart, who now runs the excellent Pocket Notebooks site – a great guy to talk to, and we’ll be reviewing his wares very soon.

  4. Encountering the revamped Silvine red notebooks; pictures don’t really do them justice.

  5. Playing with the very nice brass pens and pencils from Ystudio.  We’ll get some to review if we can.

  6. Flipping through the new Rhodia Heritage Collection; they really do look the business and we are endeavouring to acquire some to test.

  7. Discovering that Fabriano notebooks are coming back to our high streets soon; good-quality dot grids which you don’t have to go online for sound like they could be very handy.

  8. Meeting the owner of the new bricks-and-mortar shop in lovely Hexham, Penfax.

  9. Admiring the refillable notebooks for people who know that ‘traveller’ has two Ls, from Paper Republic – and yes, we’re aiming to review those too.

  10. Discovering that Sheaffer still make some proper posh pens.  We can’t be so certain of getting some of those to play with, but we’ll see.

  11. Wading through a veritable forest of shiny new Leuchtturm notebooks, with a lot of understandable fuss about how 1917 was, y’know, a whole century ago and everything, and watching their portable embossing machine and old-school Gutenberg lettering rack in progress (see below for more on how to bag the results).

Lowlights included:

  1. Heating which threatened to boil all exhibitors alive, until a merciful cool-down after lunch.

  2. A certain rather well-known manufacturer whose representatives didn’t recognise one of their own pens, got confused about how flex nibs worked and had to be given a brief lecture on model numbers and the difference between push-button converters and piston filling systems.  We shall leave them unidentified to spare their blushes… don’t mess with penthusiasts, people!

Win the notebook

Leuchtturm kindly embossed our name in a silver on a unique United Inkdom A6 notebook, and with only one of them in the whole world we couldn’t possibly divide it between our team so we decide to hand it over to you!  We asked for comments with weird and wonderful ideas about what you’d do with such notebook in your pocket (or indeed in your hand), and the winning answer was, well, world domination.  How could we argue?

 

 

 

 

9 thoughts on “London Stationery Show report

  1. Sounds like a brilliant outing! So, hmmmm what would I do with such a notebook? Firstly, it would be written upon in all my best inks – Caroube di Chypre is my favourite. And I would fill it full of stupendous quotes from books and TV (and overheard conversations) and song lyrics and when I am rich and famous, I can say that I owe it all to you 😀 <3

  2. Well I’m going to go against the grain. It’s the perfect size to fit in my pocket so that I can write down what went well and what didn’t go so well when I’m teaching (I’m a part-time riding instructor). What better way to combine two hobbies.

  3. So many reviews to look forward to. Your teaching the pen representative made me laugh. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall then. Whilst I may sound crazy, I won’t be entering your fab competition, as I’ve just received an A6 Leuchtturm, though the temptation was strong to join in just to get your embossed one.

  4. I’d jot down all the important drugs and medical mnemonics I need for my upcoming medical school exams. It’ll also be really useful for jotting down clinical pearls when I start training in hospital wards next year. Can never be without paper and a (fountain) pen as a medical student!

  5. This notebook is absolutely vital to my plans for world domination. Aspects of nefarious plots can come to me at any time when I am out and about engaging in my cover-story normal life. If I don’t have a discreet-sized high-quality notebook to keep track of everything, I fear my despicable career will come to nothing.

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