Welcome to my second review for United Inkdom. This time I will be looking at the other item I received in the post that brought me the Inventery Pocket Pen, the rather lovely A5 Notebook Cover from Elrohir Leather.
This is a rather nice, thick, embossed leather cover with built in half-pockets and seven built-in elastics for holding your notebooks. With the capacity to hold this many notebooks, coupled with the thickness and weight of the leather, I would say that this particular size is more of a desk notebook than something you’d necessarily want to carry around with you all the time. This cover will comfortably hold A5 notebooks, which Elrohir also supply in a variety of paper styles and colours. I have here various parchment, cartridge and pastel papers.
The yellow pastel paper is very smooth and takes ink well with no feathering or bleeding, although it is quite thin and so there is some ghosting. The parchment paper feels fractionally less smooth to the touch, but is just as good to write on with absolutely no feathering. It feels marginally thicker, though this could be an illusion, and there is no discernible ghosting. The cartridge paper is noticeably thicker, as you’d expect, and would be suitable for mixed media artwork. The paper does crinkle very slightly with the application of water, so caution is advisable. Of course, you can insert your own preferred notebooks as well, since the covers come in a variety of sizes and styles.
Returning to the cover itself, the embossing on the front cover is very pretty, the reverse being plain and it is a beautiful object. It is also hand-stitched and very well constructed from sturdy, veg-tanned leather. These will not curl at the corners in the way that some leather covers do. The covers come in a range of patterns and sizes, from A8 to A4, not to mention B sizes and Midori style, so more than enough options to suit anyone’s requirements for a notebook cover. Prices range from around £15 for the tiny A8 to just under £100 for an A4 size with stitched pockets.
I only have one real criticism in that, personally, I’m not overly keen on the execution of the colour staining. I can see that the aim is for a textured or weathered look. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hit and miss and in places it just looks a bit splodgy, with visible strokes and tide marks. Maybe this is deliberate and I am just being overly nit-picky, but it bothered me enough to want to “fix” it.
In summary, really lovely notebook covers, but since they are handmade the implementation will be variable and not necessarily exactly as you see in the pictures. If you regard this as one of the delights of buying hand crafted items, you will love this. If, on the other hand, you have a tendency towards OCD or perfectionism, then you will probably be driven crazy.
