Objects of Desire: Pith Notebooks
Some things are almost too beautiful to use. The Pith Notebook is definitely in this category with its matt card cover and exposed stitched spine. Everything about this book shouts both quality and unconventionality, it doesn’t look like your average notebook, and it doesn’t feel like it either.
Where to start – the lack of a traditional spine makes it a perfect rectangle, like a block of paper, with only the little fabric ‘jeans’ label popping out at the side to distract you. The card covers are cut flush with the inside pages making it look impossibly top and tailed, as though nothing is connected.
It is beautifully connected though, with section-sewn binding where ten separate stitched booklets (signatures) are sewn and glued together in the traditional method. This means nothing can fall out and it opens completely flat. The beauty of this age-old bookbinding technique is fully on show with no spine covering, adding to the sense of it being both modern and yet hand crafted.
The paper inside is Swedish and luxuriously thick, fully certified as sustainable and comes in a suitably eclectic range of rulings including simple light grey lines. The smart and colourful covers are created from recycled card and the books are made here in the UK giving it a sustainable footprint which is boosted by the little packs of seeds that accompany them as well as the tree that is planted for every book sold.
It is therefore hard to seemingly tarnish it with scruffy notes and markings, sketches and to-do lists. But if we don’t then they sit on a shelf, lifeless and forgotten until we next stumble across it and wonder at its pristine beauty all over again. Better to celebrate its singular design by taking the plunge and using it, filling it with dates and scribblings and appreciating it everyday.
We are seeing a big uptake in companies choosing to brand their logo on Pith notebooks, thanks to the combination of beauty and sustainability. If you are interested then find out more about what Pith could do for you.