Hierarchies of Fountain Pen Friendly Paper

April 6, 2024 6:30 AM

“So as a baseline, what needs to happen before I will publicly recommend something as “fountain pen friendly paper”? My standard is fairly simple: No bleed-through or feathering with any fountain pen nib that can be reasonably used for everyday writing. (Because I mainly use my paper for drafting and notetaking, as opposed to drawing, wet ink samples, or flex-nib calligraphy, my standards may be more lenient than some.)”

This topic and related ones have been appearing on the blue forever. Here’s one previously for your delectation.

posted by cupcakeninja (26 comments total)

Great resource! I have a collection of fountain pens and write exclusively with a fountain pen.

So much is personal preference (I, for instance, like bound journals and don't like spiral) but the fountain pen community is very happy to express firm opinions. For instance, I'm using a Rhodia with Clairfontaine paper in it and I don't love it, because the surface is a little too hard for my pens though it doesn't bleed through.

As it says, people disapprove of Moleskine for fountain pens because of the bleedthrough, but I really like them for various reasons including the way they feel under the point of my pen. Also, I use a fine or very fine point with stable black or blue, so it doesn't bleed through as much.

Plus when I fill a journal, which I do every two or three months, I type up and archive any events or musings I want to keep, rip out the pages of the journal, and put it in the recycling. I don't feel as bad doing that with a Moleskine.

YMMV: This is the result of realizing a few years ago I already had 50 handwritten journals on my shelf and was adding to the pile at the rate of several journals a year. I am in the process of a sort of death cleaning, and after dealing with all my mother's writing after her death, I don't want my only child to have to do that. Last year I used the typed-up bits to write a short memoir and got bound copies using Lulu.
posted by Peach at 7:26 AM on April 6 [8 favorites]

I am a bound journal person myself. I recently bought a pile of them to try and land on a “favorite,” and I’m hoping to have an answer by year’s end, but TBD.

I am in the process of a sort of death cleaning, and after dealing with all my mother's writing after her death, I don't want my only child to have to do that.

Bless you.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:35 AM on April 6 [3 favorites]

Oh, this is far too relevant to my interests. I've gotten interested in fountain pens recently, and while I can't afford anything fancy, I do love them.
posted by maryellenreads at 7:49 AM on April 6 [3 favorites]

I have several thousand fountain pen nibs, probably manufactured in the early 1900s. Haven't been able to really sell them/deal with them. Was a family business in Minnesota. And they are very cool. Pre-nuclear! But knowing how picky fountain pen people are, just have never had the gumption to sort them all out size-wise and try to sell them...
posted by Windopaene at 7:53 AM on April 6 [4 favorites]

Some years ago, I ended up with a crate full of size XL Moleskine Cahier journals and they became my standard desk journal for work. When I used to go into an office, I used retractable gel pens and the paper was fine. When I switched to working from home, I wanted to use fountain pens but was put off by the bleed through of the Moleskine paper. I discovered that there are a number of fountain pen ink that work well with low quality paper. I’ll leave these two links here for future readers:
The Best Fountain Pen Inks for Ordinary Paper (Jet Pens blog)
Noodler's Fountain Pen Inks: A Comprehensive Guide (Jet Pens blog)
posted by BlueTongueLizard at 8:47 AM on April 6 [5 favorites]

Swiss Migros school recicled paper.
No bleed, no feathering, recicled.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 9:09 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]

As a left handed person who is incapable of writing clearly and without smudging even using a pencil I am a spectator in fountain pen culture, but I do find it nifty how people make an art out of something as mundane as writing.

Forge forward fountain pen enthusiasts! I can't participate but I can appreciate!
posted by sotonohito at 9:22 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]

The Gentleman Stationer is a great resource. I appreciate the author sharing his experience with various writing tools in his work as an attorney who likes to draft a lot of his writing by hand.

Another great resource is The Well-Appointed Desk (paper tagged posts). At least a couple of the writers on the site are left-handed, including the site owner, and share lefty perspectives on writing from time to time.

I'm a little surprised the Tomoe River paper saga never made its way as a post to the Blue.
posted by audi alteram partem at 9:53 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]

Maruman Mnemosyne Notebooks are my journaling choice. They're spiral-bound and lay flat, which is ideal for me, and no fountain pen bleed-through ever.
posted by tommasz at 10:12 AM on April 6 [2 favorites]

Forge forward fountain pen enthusiasts! I can't participate but I can appreciate!

I'm left handed as well, and in the few moments of wondering if I'd have a better time with a right-to-left system, have considered giving Arabic or Hebrew a try.
posted by tclark at 10:24 AM on April 6 [2 favorites]

I primarily write a kind of bastardized italic hand using nibs in the stub to italic family with 0.9 mm to 1.3 mm on the downstroke. Hardback bound notebooks with Tomoe River have been my paper of choice. No bleed through, ghosting or feathering, and results in very nice shading and sheen. Clairfontaine for letter stationery, although I find it a bit slick for some nibs resulting in hard starts.
posted by slkinsey at 10:30 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]

The Tomoe River saga is only one of the tempests that sweep the fountain pen community. Currently, there is much debate over the fact that Lamy pens got sold to Mitsubishi Pencil and Pelikan got sold to The Hamelin Group, and is the current manufacturer of Kaweco is as good as the previous one? In my opinion the reinvented Esterbrook manufacturer is doing a bang-up job with the Estie, it's just that I tend to drop pens, so that kind of material just doesn't work for me because it shatters too easily. I follow all this with vague interest, mind you, and continue to use whatever journals I come across because (heresy!) I mostly like writing, and I mostly like writing with a fountain pen, so the marvelous cheap Jinhao 9019s and a composition book make me just as happy.
posted by Peach at 10:48 AM on April 6 [3 favorites]

I love notebook recommendation threads! It’s always fun to get suggestions for things I will buy and leave on my shelf, untouched and pristine.
posted by MrBadExample at 11:26 AM on April 6 [5 favorites]

I'm not picky about notebooks because I tend to write with fine dry-ish nibs - I'd been using Moleskines for years before I heard that they weren't fountain pen friendly.

That said, Apica makes astoundingly good reasonably priced notebooks. Sometimes I am tempted by Tomoe River, but I'm honestly too nervous about falling in love with something I can't afford.
posted by Jeanne at 11:43 AM on April 6 [2 favorites]

I have several thousand fountain pen nibs, probably manufactured in the early 1900s. Haven't been able to really sell them/deal with them.

Windopaene, if you’re serious about getting rid of them I’d strongly suggest getting in touch with St. Louis Art Supply (scroll to the bottom for contact info)
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 1:18 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

Windopaene: fountain pen nibs? or dip pen nibs? The latter would make a lot more sense.
posted by slkinsey at 1:40 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

You’ll definitely find vintage fountain pen nibs in large lots; I’ve found boxes of 500+ twice at estate sales. I’m not sure what doesn’t make sense about it?
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 1:50 PM on April 6

I’ve read all the posts about Tomoe / Clairefontaine / Rhodia / Midori / Leuchtturm / Mnemosyne and I find that as long as the paper surface is smooth and at least 120 gsm, I’m happy with no name hardcover notebooks from China and Vietnam.

Pilot Metro Fine nib
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:22 PM on April 6

Tomoe River Paper and its successor are the endgame for fountain pen paper IMHO - crazy thin, super smooth, no bleedthrough unless you have a very very wet pen. At that thinness a diary becomes a reasonable proposition. Any young whipersnapper can make a decent 90gsm paper.

Actually, for everyday use, I've settled on the brilliant Cambridge Counsel A4 notebooks, great to write on, £15 for ten. Use them everyday with a fountain pen.

*runs*
posted by bookbook at 2:23 PM on April 6 [1 favorite]

I am a big fan of Clarefontaine, Rhodia, Midori and Apica. Tomoe River is too thin for me - there may not be bleed but you can see the writing on the other side because it is so thin that it is a little transparent.

But any cheap and cheerful stationery for the Japanese market seems to be made with fountain pens in mind, so I increasingly just get whatever generic notebook is on offer from Daiso/Muji/local Japanese goods store.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:59 PM on April 6

Tomoe River makes many inks look more beautiful - great shading, great sheen. Not all inks display these properties, but for the many that do the results are fun and beautiful. I still have a small stash of the old version, but the new version is also great, perhaps just not quite as great as before.
posted by caddis at 8:40 PM on April 6

lefty FP user checking in to advise my fellow lefties that a FP writing experience can actually be quite successful and very pleasant. The key (as with pretty much all other FP applications) is the right pairing of ink and paper. If you are a REALLY STRONG overwriter I suppose there might be a struggle but I am a semi-overwriter and I have been using FP happily for ...20 years? Picture the smoothest gel nib pen experience you've ever had...except the nibs don't get wrecked from hand angle, they just wear in to your writing angle...and you don't get the scratchy blobbyness of a ballpoint or the dust and smear of a pencil.

PLUS! a whole new avenue of collection/fetishization in terms of pens and ink colors! (caveat I generally buy the cheaper pens, sub $US 25, and have been happy with the outcomes. my preferred pen right now is a platinum plaisir M or F, or a TWSBI Swipe M. I have found the TWSBI inks to be quite good for my use case even if the color selection is a bit basic. I mostly write on stacks of used photocopy/LP paper.
posted by hearthpig at 1:21 PM on April 7 [1 favorite]

I asked my dad, who's been a lefty fountain pen user for decades, if he had any advice on the issue and he linked me this article
posted by rifflesby at 6:40 PM on April 7 [1 favorite]

I heard this weekend (at the Atlanta Pen Show) that Kokuyo paper is one of the most popular papers in Taiwan, I think it was. You can order loose leaf on Amazon, and many specialty stores have it as well.

The quality of writing depends on nib size, ink, and paper. There are dry inks and wet inks, etc - so it’s a combination of things for sure.
posted by needlegrrl at 6:51 AM on April 8

I used to use Rhodia and Mneomsyne notebooks, but now that I use really wet pens and really wet ink, there's an annoying amount of feathering. And I like Tomoe River, but since I do all my writing at a desk, the thinness isn't really necessary. Also, I realized that I love a sort of thicker "cushion" feel on paper, especially since I have a heavy hand.

So these days, I have four notebooks:

1. My everyday work notebook, which has Yamamoto B7-Bulky.
2. My fancy calligraphy-noodling and ink-testing notebook with Cosmo Air Light (RIP)
3. My Formula One notebook which also uses Yamamoto B7 Bulky because it stands up to the marker-based doodles Kid Machine does when he is bored of the Dutch national anthem
4. My 2024 Hobonichi Techo planner that I use as a diary. It has new stock Tomoe River paper, and I like it, but next year, I think I'm going to go back to Midori MD or breaking out one of my precious, beloved 384 page CAL notebooks.

All of these notebooks except for the Hobonichi are B5's made by danika58 -- they're really nicely made with Kraft paper covers and sturdy, lie-flat binding, and I love the bigger B5 size since I do all my writing at my desk. I went into a brief but intense period of mourning back for about six weeks because danika58's Etsy shut down -- but now they're back! With some really nice stuff! On a non-etsy website! Where shipping is included in the listed price!

So I splurged on a couple more notebooks of Cosmo Air Light and some pads of deadstock, old machine Tomoe River coming. It's cheaper than getting into fancy handbags or fancy work clothes or jewelry, and it's even cheaper than going out for drinks at places where I might catch COVID from people I don't want to talk to anyways.

I'm really delighted to see threads about fountain pens showing up more regularly on the Blue!
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:45 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]

That said, Apica makes astoundingly good reasonably priced notebooks.

I have to agree. My favorite notebooks are made by Apica and would have a monthly subscription to said notebooks if such a thing existed.
posted by grubi at 5:26 AM on April 9