Frido is starting a new creative project with the MD Cotton Thick Notebook, so I got to compare the brand-new notebook side by side with the exact same one, which I am about to finish.
I love doing these photo comparisons for many reasons.
They are testaments of one of the BK values - to curate artifacts that age and patina beautifully. I often think of our leather and canvas items for this, but the notebook is not an exception. A sturdy notebook can go through such a transformation.
Day-to-day notebook taking is a non-glorious activity. An individual entry is like a piece of a puzzle, difficult to make sense of on its own. Of course, I journal and use these notebooks for the process of journaling itself, not just to have an end result of a finished notebook. But it takes some effort to stick with “one” notebook and not get distracted by a sea of other wonderful notebooks, especially if you are a stationery shop owner (lol). So when I reach the last few pages, I can’t help but acknowledge a little bit of accomplishment.
I also “do” love holding the end result of the finished notebook to contemplate on the zeitgeist that is captured in those pages. Frido explained to me that the word "zeitgeist” loosely means “spirit of a particular time” in German. When I pick up different notebooks from the past, I can sense the energy specific to the timespan they embody, sometimes very vividly.
Lastly, isn’t it just so lovely to see our fingerprints all over the notebook? Whether it’s a collection of dog-eared corners, pages warping from the watercolor paintings inside, or stickers all over the cover of the notebook, I can trace my perfectly imperfect humanness everywhere. It’s messy, full of life, and me…
As Frido spends time with his new MD Cotton Thick Notebook, it’s going to look and feel so different from mine. One is not better than the other, but I am pretty sure it will be charming in its own way!
0 comments