Exacompta Nostalgie Journal by @Exaclair

I've been using various journals and notebooks for daily record keeping, and when my last one ran out I dug out this Exacompta Nostalgie Journal with Frank Lloyd Wright's May Basket illustration on the leather-like cover.

That this is not leather is a tribute to the faux-textile manufacturers everywhere. It looks and feels like leather, while the tan color and saddle-stitch needle work bring to mind a leather journal made from saddle leather. The May Basket design, originally intended for a magazine, is embossed and appears on both the front and the back. Inside you have a brief description of May Basket's original date and purpose as well as Wright's signature. Overall, an impressive cover.

The journal is an Exacompta Basics Forum blank refill, with 200 pages of 64gsm Clairefontaine paper. If you are a regular user of the 80-90gsm Clairefontaine and Rhodia papers you will feel the difference in this blank refill's paper right away. It's smooth to write on, but much thinner and easily see through using fountain pen, rollerball gel ink, or ballpoint oil-based ink--but especially the first two.


I've been keeping a daily record of my consumption habits, both food and money, to get a better sense of what I'm doing and why. I like the size of the Basics Forum blank refill (4.75 by 6.75, plus a few extra millimeters for the cover), as it gives me the room I want to write out notes as well as accounting. The above, with some details buffed out, is an example of one day in the life ("pigeon" is a notation on an injured pigeon I found outside my building, and took down the street to the guy who raises pigeons hoping he could help--don't know the outcome yet, haven't had the nerve to go back--Schroedinger's Cat, anyone?).




But entries can be seen through from day to day, making this a very busy page. On the one hand that's great, as I only have to use one side to mark the page in half (such as above, the line divider shows through on the left page while I've made a line on the right). On the other, I have to read my current writing over my older writing which makes the page seem too busy.

All in all this is an excellent cover and a very good refill journal. If you're looking for something decorative and functional, check out the Exacompta Nostalgie Journals.