Endless Nameless
As anyone who lingers amongst stationery fans online will know, one of the most frequent enquiries is "what's the best paper to use with a fountain pen?". The intelligent answer to which is a further question; which fountain pen, and what is being written? Choosing the right surface to scribble upon is very much a matter of horses for courses.
Here, then, is a thoroughbred; well-groomed, reassuringly expensive and probably best put in skilled hands. It's made from Tomoe River paper, which was specifically not made for fountain pens, at least not originally; it was intended to be specialist printing paper for glossy catalogues and the like. Fittingly for that purpose it is thin, smooth but remarkably unabsorbent, so that photographs etc. show up well. By a lucky accident someone tried using a fountain pen and found that same hydrophobic quality led to the sheen of ink showing up well, and a fan base was born.
Endless employs Tomoe River as the substance of a handsome hard-backed notebook, with the sheets both sewn and glued for a firm setting. That's useful because paper this thin can otherwise wriggle distractingly while it is being written upon. For the unlined version of the Recorder, that tight binding also holds the helpfully provided guide sheet in place while the writer needs it. There's a handy pocket in the back to keep the guide sheet safe in, too; it's an impressively well thought-through product. But what, after all, is it for?
Well, let's be up-front here; this probably isn't the ideal notebook to take to work. If you're keen to write a meeting agenda in copperplate then it might just have dried by the time you get to Any Other Business, but have some blotting paper to hand just in case. Calligraphy is the obvious purpose, since it flatters even amateur efforts, but it would also doubtless suit the bullet-journal enthusiast who writes precisely one page per day or, conceivably, the situationist poet knocking out a haiku every seventeen hours. It's an indulgence, in other words - so if you treat yourself to one, why not do something creative with it? Your nib will thank you for it.
