Classic French Notebooks

Walk into any stationery shop in France and you’ll see an extensive array of these beloved notebooks. They are the classic composition books introduced to French schoolchildren in primary school; the notebooks, in various bindings, sizes, and colors then become seemingly indispensable for decades to come. We consider this version the simplest, the most economical, and the one with the most useful size and binding in this wide range of notebooks. In cafes, you’ll see adults writing in them; in grocery stores, consulting them; they’re pulled out of briefcases, purses, and backpacks; they’re on desks in libraries and in bookstores. Anywhere someone needs to write something, there seems to be a Clairefontaine notebook. The pages are smooth, 90g, ivory, French-milled paper that is ruled, acid-free, pH neutral, marker and fountain pen–friendly. The spine is stapled. The French company that manufactures these notebooks was founded in 1858 in the town of Etival Clairefontaine, ninety km from S