The William Hannah Notebook: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

I first saw a William Hannah notebook on Instagram and was immediately entranced. The supple leather, metal accents, and industrial-strength rings got my undivided attention. So did the price.

I am a hoarder of notebooks. I love the smell of paper and all the different notebook designs available these days. It is hard for me to settle on just one notebook–and why should I? I am currently using a Hobonichi Cousin for my calendar, a Nanami Seven Seas Notebook for my journal, a half-dozen Word notebooks for various things, and a passport-sized Traveler's Notebook for my purse. Then there's my Baron Fig (blank, so far) and a trove of other notebooks sitting on my shelves for which I've yet to find a purpose.

Why on earth would I need another notebook? Well, who doesn't always need another notebook? Besides, I figured that having a British-made notebook with buttery leather and lovely paper would inspire me to write poetry. I have a poetry thesis coming up, so I need to get more poems written. That's what my William Hannah Notebook is for . . . though I've yet to write even one poem in it. I have managed a calendar page.

I originally planned to get the whiskey notebook with the kingfisher interior. But when I went to order my notebook, there was a lovely color called agave. I ordered that. I expected it to take up to two weeks to receive the notebook, so I was amazed when it arrived in five days. The packaging is fantastic, as you would expect from a British company. Everything is wrapped in William Hannah paper.

The notebook is inside a sturdy outer box that opens like a book:

There is a card inside with your receipt and a handwritten note:

The person who packaged my notebook included some extras for me since I was ordering from America:

• A sampler packet of all the different sorts of paper you can order with your notebook.

• A packet of additional lined paper ("To maximize shipping costs to the US").

• A card with extra hardware in case I want to remove the pen loop.

The notebook itself is a simple design. It is made from one thick piece of leather with a suede interior. They offer many different colors. I chose agave which is a beautiful teal. You can even order custom colors if you wish. Both the outer and inner covers are stitched in a coordinating color of thread.

The leather is luscious. It smells wonderful and is so smooth it makes you want to stroke and hold the notebook all the time–which is weird, and people will stare at you, so you might want refrain from this in public. Because the leather is so soft, it is prone to scratches and scrapes. But these will add character to your notebook as it ages.

The only decoration on the front is a William Hannah pin made of steel with the initials WH engraved on it.

The pin screws on, so you can opt for a pen loop, which is what I did. I'm not sure I will make use of the pen loop, though, since I rarely carry just one pen with me. I may remove it and go back to the simple pin.

My Lamy 2000 in the pen loop

The only other decoration is the William Hannah logo engraved on the back.

I wish the notebook had a closure system of some kind, for example, a loop that could be used with the pin. This isn't a deal breaker, of course, but I do like to keep my notebooks closed when not in use or while I'm carrying them.

As stated above, the interior of the notebook is lined in suede. I chose the petrol color for the interior, but the agave notebook can also be paired with lime or fuchsia suede. I would like the option to have pockets sewn into the interior for cards and other loose items.

The discs are made of 303 gauge stainless steel. These babies are meant to last and will not tarnish. They are sewn in place and are sturdy.

The discs don't open and close like a three ring binder. They are solid rings. Instead, the paper is cut to fit the rings, and you can easily remove paper by pulling from the upper right downward. To insert paper, you simply press the pages onto the rings. What is wonderful about this system, is you can arrange and rearrange pages in any order you want.

The 100gsm paper is magnificent. It is almost as thick as index cards and is smooth–no grainy stuff to clog up your extra-fine nibs. When you order your notebook, you also order paper, and you can configure it in any combination of 60 pages (or more, if you wish). They offer plain, lined, grid, and dot-grid paper. You can also choose templates for to-do lists and/or weekly calendar pages. You even get to pick the ink color for your pages. I chose 50 pages of lined and 10 pages of dot-grid in petrol-colored ink.

I tested the paper with several different inks.

The only one that didn't do well was MB Toffee in my Cross Concord nib. Admittedly, this is a super-wide, wet nib, and the ink feathered. All the other pens and inks worked perfectly on this paper.

Only the MB Toffee ink in my very wide Cross Concord nib feathered

The paper has a little bit of show through, but absolutely no bleed through, even with the wettest inks. I did some ink swabs with some of my most saturated colors, and not one bled through.

The ink shows through the paper slightly, but there's no bleed through at all

My only complaint about the paper in the William Hannah notebook is that it isn't perforated. When you pull sheets out, you wind up with a side that has snaggy edges, like spiral notebook paper. If the pages were perforated, you could remove these easily, and that's important for those of us who are OCD about smooth paper edges. I'm a professor, okay? I hate snaggy paper.

A William Hannah notebook starts at £95 (=$137.54 at the current exchange rate). A pen loop is an additional £6, and shipping is £17.50. Bespoke notebooks start at £120.

Paper refills are £5 for 50 pages and £9 for 100 pages plus shipping. You can buy an Atoma punch and use your own paper. However, the punch costs £139 at CultPens, so it's quite an investment. I couldn't find any American retailers who sell an Atoma punch.

The William Hannah notebook is an expensive purchase. But I think it is worth every penny. The care that went into its creation is obvious. It is configurable to anyone's taste, and the paper is outstanding. The William Hannah notebook will last a lifetime.

Pros

• The William Hannah Notebook exhibits top-quality workmanship.
• It is configurable with multiple options for printed paper, including templates for weekly calendaring and to do lists.
• The ring system is sturdy and allows you to arrange and rearrange pages.
• The notebook lies perfectly flat when open.
• The leather is pure bliss and comes in many different colors. You can even create your own bespoke notebook.
• The 100gsm paper works well with any sort of pen or pencil, but it is especially good for fountain pen users.

Cons

• This is a very expensive notebook.
• The notebook does not have inner pockets nor is there a way to keep the notebook closed.
• When paper is removed it has snaggy edges.
• Refills can get expensive because of the exchange rate and shipping from England.

Bookblock Custom Printed Notebook Review

Spawned from a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, Bookblock Notebooks allow you to build a notebook just for you. Their covers are customizable with your own artwork, and their are several different options for notebook layouts and paper options. Bookblock offered to make a Pen Addict logo notebook for me earlier this year and I gladly took them up on the offer.

Working with Bookblock to get the notebook made was as simple as providing them a high resolution file of my logo. The cover art doesn’t have to be a simple logo or brand either. You can upload you hand-drawn artwork, digital designs, or anything else you want to show off on the front cover of your notebook. They even snuck in The Pen Addict tagline on the back cover of mine, which was a nice touch. The quality of the logo printing is excellent, and the colors were spot on. The other examples I have seen from Bookblock look equally as nice.

Dark smudge around the logo

Before getting to the paper choices, there were two issues with my notebook I brought up to the Bookblock team. One, their choice of packaging negatively affected the logo design during shipping. The notebook wasn’t wrapped inside the cardboard envelope that it shipped in, causing it to rub the cover all the way across the Atlantic. You can see in the picture how the dark grey ink smeared across the white. It’s going to get dinged up anyway with regular use, but I want to be the one to do it. This is an easy fix though, as one layer of bubble wrap should do the trick.

Secondly, there are no grommets or other protection where the elastic band connects to the back of the notebook. When you are printing the covers of the notebooks in color you are going to see chipping and wear around those holes if they aren’t protected, and it will likely get worse over time.

Writing - front

The grommet issue is directly related to the choice of notebook, in this case Monsieur. There are a few other choices, such as Moleskine, Castelli, G.F. Smith, and Bookblocks own brand name. And honestly, I would choose all of them over Monsieur due to the poor paper they use.

Writing - back

When using any type of wet ink, from fountain to rollerball, you can feel it seeping into the page as you write. With the metal nibs of fountain pens, especially the finer ones, you can feel the paper loosening and even getting caught in the nibs of finer pens. Ballpoints and gel inks are generally ok and pencils are great. Markers obviously need not apply, although that can be said about almost any standard notebook.

As an idea and product, Bookblocks has what it takes to provide quality to the end user, but they could use better paper choices. I would choose Moleskine over the Monsieur every time, and word from friends is that the Castelli Notebook they offer handles most inks very well. Hopefully we will see other options in the future.

My thanks to Bookblock for sending this notebook to me at no charge for review purposes.

Tom Bihn Field Journal Notebook Review

There is no bag maker that impresses me more with their quality than Tom Bihn. Just holding and touching their products makes me smile because I can feel the quality in my hands and see it with my eyes. That is before I even begin using their products, which always surprise and delight with their thoughtful design.

I arranged with Tom Bihn a few months ago to test drive and review their Aeronaut 45 max size carry-on for my pen show travels (review coming soon!) and they surprised me with news of a relaunch of their Field Journal Notebook. I reviewed the original model back in 2010, and they asked if I was interested in taking a look at the latest edition. Yes please!

The Tom Bihn Field Journal Notebook was designed as it was named - for work in the field. Think biologists, geologists, park rangers and anyone that needed a durable, weatherproof way to carry their writing and research tools. As it turns out, it is perfect for artists, writers, journalists, students, and anyone else who wants high quality portable storage for their stationery.

With an exterior made from 1000D Cordura, the Field Journal Notebook can get wet, dirty, and take a beating while protecting your writing kit. The water-repellent YKK zippers add to the durability factor, as does the tight stitching. The tolerances on this case are impressive.

If you need maximum storage in a small format then you are in luck. I count 16 different pockets, and knowing Tom Bihn, there is likely another one or two I haven’t discovered yet. All standard pens and mechanical pencils fit with ease, with only the longest wooden pencils needing to be moved to one of the two pouches they can fit in.

The paper is held in place by a small format three-ring binder which accepts 5 1/2” x 8 1/2” paper (exactly half of an 8 1/2” x 11” sheet). You can choose from grid or lined 100% recycled Neenah Conservation Paper when ordering, or add on Crane's Crest 24# 100% cotton paper as an extra.

For testing, I used the same pens across all three papers. While you’d think the two Neenah papers would perform identically, I slight felt differences between the two. The lined was smoother than the grid, but the lined also had more ghosting on the back. There was no real bleed or feathering, even with my fountain pens, so that is a big plus. In a blind test I could possibly tell a difference, but they are the same paper stock and I could be delusional.

The Crane’s Crest is a different animal. It doesn’t have much texture to the touch, but you feel it when writing. My plastic tip drawing pens had trouble on it, leaving a drier line than on the other paper choices. This makes it great for pencil though, and likely watercolors or heavier media. The Crane’s Crest is also the only page that is perforated.

Click here to see the full size writing sample.

All in all, the paper choices are nice, but if I were a heavy user of the Field Journal I would look at punching my own pages of a paper I know and love.

Filed in the “they thought of everything” category, the three-ring mechanism is removable and can rotate 180 degrees to accommodate left-handed writers, or those writing in other languages. There is also a plastic leaf clipped into the binder that you can move to have a hard backing behind the page when you write.

As with any Tom Bihn product, it is not possible to fawn over it too much. They are that good, and the Field Journal Notebook is no exception. A delightful product made by a delightful company.

The Field Journal Notebook comes in 13 colors with several add-on choices and retails for $90.00.

My thanks to Tom Bihn for sending me this product at no charge for purposes of this review.

Wow has my model grown in 5 1/2 years!