Gelder fountain pen
€118,00Three weeks
Made inside the walls at Elburg · in stock
The Octavo No. 4
€24,00
A sewn notebook of 176 pages, 90 gsm Dutch wove, ruled on our own press. It opens flat at the first page because the sections are sewn, not glued, and it stays flat when it is full.
Ruling
Ruled 7 mmDotted 5 mmPlain
Cloth
Ink blueOatmealVermilion
Order at the counter
Pick a ruling and a cloth at the counter or say which you want when you write; every combination is the same price and all nine are kept made up.
Posted the same afternoon on orders before 14.00. €4,95 in the Netherlands, €9,50 across the EU, free over €75. Thirty days to send it back, written in or not.
We made it because we kept being asked for a book that lies flat.
Most notebooks at this price are glued at the spine, which means the first thirty pages fight you and the last thirty fall out. The Octavo is eleven sections of sixteen pages, sewn through the fold with linen thread onto two tapes, and the tapes are glued down under the endpaper rather than the block itself. That is an afternoon of extra work per batch and the reason it costs €24 instead of €9.
It is named for its size, not for a fourth attempt. An octavo is a sheet folded three times — 127 by 203 millimetres here, close enough to A5 to fit the sleeve of a bag and different enough that you notice.
The stock
90 gsm, sized hard, warm rather than white.
It is a wove paper from a mill in Gelderland, internally sized so a wet nib sits on the surface instead of spreading into it. Fountain-pen ink dries in about eight seconds and shows through enough to tell you there is a page behind, which is what a book should do, and not enough to read the words on it.
If you write with a broad italic or a brush pen, take the 120 gsm Mill Laid instead and accept ninety-six pages rather than a hundred and seventy-six.
What it actually is
Paper. 90 gsm wove, warm white, neutral pH, acid free. Eleven sewn sections of sixteen pages make 176 pages, numbered in the bottom outer corner from the first recto.
Ruling. Letterpress, from brass rule locked up in a forme and printed on an Albion. A 7 mm ruled grey, a 5 mm dot grid, or nothing at all. The last eight pages are always plain, whichever you choose.
Binding. Linen thread, sewn through the fold onto two linen tapes, rounded and backed by hand. Boards are 2 mm grey millboard covered in a bookcloth woven in Brabant. Headbands are stitched, not stuck.
Size and weight. 127 × 203 mm closed, 24 mm across the spine, 412 grams. It opens to 254 mm and stays there without a hand on it, which is the whole point of the sewing.
In the box. The book, a silk ribbon marker already sewn in, two blank deckled cards cut from the same stock so you can test a nib before you commit, and a folded sheet listing the eleven inks and how each behaves on this paper.
After it is full. Bring it back and we will rebind it in cloth over boards for €55, or take the block out and keep the covers for the next one. We photograph every book before we take it apart.
Delivery
€4,95 anywhere in the Netherlands and €9,50 across the European Union, free on anything over €75. Orders placed before 14.00 on a working day are packed and posted that afternoon; after that they go the next morning. Everything is tracked. Nothing needs a signature, so it fits through most Dutch letterboxes.
Returns
Thirty days from the day it arrives. Send it back for any reason or none and we refund the price of the book and what you paid to have it delivered. A notebook you have written in is still returnable — it goes to the bindery to be taken apart, never back on the shelf.
Bought with it
Bottled ink, 50 ml
€14,50In stockCorrespondence cards, fifty
€19,00In stockQuarto ledger
€38,00Three left
All twelve in the shop →